Development of a mid-density marker panel for lettuce (Lactuca sativa L.)

Small public breeding programs, particularly those focused on minor and specialty crops, often face significant limitations in resources dedicated to genetic research, breeding efforts, and the development of enabling technologies. The integration of molecular genetics and genomics into crop improvement requires the development, validation, and deployment of supporting tools. To support genetic studies and breeding efforts in lettuce (Lactuca sativa L.), we developed the Lettuce 3K DArTag panel as a mid-density genotyping platform, then validated its performance on key pre-breeding germplasm and mapping populations. Within the 3000 marker loci distributed across the nine chromosomes, the panel also includes 41 markers linked with economically important traits. This genotyping resource offers a rapid, cost-effective solution for generating high-quality, genome-wide DNA markers applicable to trait discovery, diversity analysis, MAS, genomic prediction, parental identification, varietal fingerprinting, and other applications supporting germplasm enhancement and varietal development in lettuce.