THE APPLICATION OF MOLECULAR MARKERS TO MONITOR INTROGRESSION OF SEED YIELD TRAITS FROM TRIFOLIUM NIGRESCENS INTO TRIFOLIUM REPENS (WHITE CLOVER)
Introgression of traits from closely related species is an important part of the white clover breeding programme at IGER. Hybrids between white clover and the annual, profusely flowering species Trifolium nigrescens, have been developed to introgress reproductive traits and improve the seed production potential of white clover. Backcross hybrids with resource allocation significantly different from the parental material have been produced. Bulked segregant analysis (BSA) using the amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) technique has been used to identify molecular markers associated with increased seed yield resulting from the introgression of genes from Trifolium nigrescens (ball clover) into white clover (T. repens).