Evaluation of total flavonoid content and analysis of related EST-SSR in Chinese peanut germplasm

Abstract As important antioxidants and secondary metabolites in peanut seeds, flavonoids have great nutritive value. In this study, total flavonoid contents (TFC) were determined in seeds of 57 peanut accessions from the province of Hebei, China. A variation of 0.39 to 4.53 mg RT g-1 FW was found, and eight germplasm samples containing more than 3.5 mg RT g-1 FW. The TFC of seed embryos ranged from 0.14 to 0.77mg RT g-1 FW. With a view to breeding high-quality peanut varieties with high yields and high TFC, we analyzed the correlations between TFC and plant and pod characteristics. The results of correlation analysis indicated that TFC was significantly negatively correlated with pod number per plant (P/P) and soluble protein content (SPC). We used 251 pairs of expressed sequence tag - simple sequence repeat (EST-SSRs) primers to sequence all germplasm samples and found four EST-SSR markers that were significantly related to TFC.