Enormous genomic resources have been developed for plants in the monocot order Poales; however, it is not clear how representative the Poales are for the monocots as a whole. The Asparagales are a monophyletic order sister to the lineage carrying the Poales and possess economically important plants such as asparagus, garlic, and onion. To assess the genomic differences between the Asparagales and Poales, we generated 11,008 unique ESTs from a normalized cDNA library of onion. Sequence analyses of these ESTs revealed microsatellite markers, single nucleotide polymorphisms, and homologs of transposable elements. Mean nucleotide similarity between rice and the Asparagales was 78% across coding regions. Expressed sequence and genomic comparisons revealed strong differences between the Asparagales and Poales for codon usage and mean GC content, GC distribution, and relative GC content at each codon position, indicating that genomic characteristics are not uniform across the monocots. The Asparagales were more similar to eudicots than to the Poales for these genomic characteristics.

The commercial production of onion ( Allium cepa L.) inbreds, hybrids, and open-pollinated (OP) cultivars would benefit from a robust set of molecular markers that confidently distinguish among elite germplasms. Large-scale DNA sequencing has revealed that single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), short insertion-deletion (indel) events, and simple sequence repeats (SSRs) are relatively abundant classes of codominant DNA markers. We identified 398 SNPs, indels, and SSRs among 35 elite onion ulations and observed that all populations could be distinguished. Phylogenetic analyses of simple-matching and Jaccard's coefficients for SSRs produced essentially identical trees and relationships were consistent with known pedigrees and previous marker evaluations. The SSRs revealed that elite germplasms from specific companies or breeding programs were often closely related. In contrast, phylogenetic analyses of SNPs and indels did not reveal clear relationships among elite onion populations and there was no agreement among trees generated using SNPs and indels vs. SSRs. This discrepancy was likely due to SNPs and indels occurring among amplicons from duplicated regions (paralogs) of the onion genome. Nevertheless, these PCR-based markers will be useful in the quality control of inbred, hybrid, and OP onion seed lots.

Natural variation exists in onion ( Allium cepa L.) for amounts of epicuticular waxes on foliage, and plants with lower amounts of these waxes suffer less feeding damage from onion thrips ( Thrips tabaci Lind.). Wild-type onion possesses copious amounts of epicuticular waxes and is often referred to as “waxy.” The recessively inherited “glossy” phenotype has significantly less wax relative to waxy types and shows resistance to onion thrips but is vulnerable to spray damage, foliar pathogens, and excessive transpiration. Phenotypes visually intermediate between waxy and glossy also exist in onion, which we refer to as “semiglossy.” Epicuticular waxes on the leaves of glossy, semiglossy, and waxy onions were evaluated for appearance using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and amounts and types were analyzed using gas chromatography/mass spectrometry. Wax crystals were clearly visible on the surface of waxy foliage with decreasing amounts on semiglossy and none on glossy leaves. The ketone hentriacontanone-16 was the most prevalent wax on leaves of waxy onion and was significantly ( P < 0.01) less on semiglossy relative to waxy plants and on glossy relative to waxy and semiglossy plants. Numbers of adult and immature onion thrips were significantly reduced ( P < 0.05) on glossy and/or semiglossy accessions relative to waxy in field and greenhouse cage experiments. These results indicate that semiglossy plants possess intermediate amounts of epicuticular waxes that may protect leaves from diseases or environmental stresses while still conferring resistance to onion thrips. Therefore, the semiglossy phenotype should be useful in integrated programs managing this important onion pest.