Pomegranate (Punica granatum L.) is an important fruit‐bearing deciduous shrub which has been under cultivation since ancient times. Genomic resources like microsatellite markers are limited in pomegranate; therefore, this study was undertaken with the objective to develop and characterize microsatellite markers using Roche 454 GS FLX Titanium pyrosequencing technology. The total length of non‐redundant sequences obtained was 19.7 Mbp, consisting of 59 603 reads assembled into 7361 contigs, of which, 567 (7.70%) contained microsatellite repeats. The average G+C content was 41.3%. Functional annotation to Arabidopsis thaliana sequences yielded 734 unigenes from 7361 contigs which were classified based on GO terms. Primer pairs were designed for total of 171 loci, out of which 167 produced reproducible polymorphic bands in 12 genotypes of pomegranate. A total of 951 alleles were identified, ranging from 1 to 14 per locus (average of 5.56). The polymorphism information content (PIC) value ranged between 0.00 and 0.910 (mean of 0.5427). The markers developed here will be useful for genetic diversity studies, gene mapping and genotyping in pomegranate.

-Papaya (Carica papaya L., 2n = 18), a polygamous angiosperm, is a major fruit crop in tropical and subtropical regions. It is trioecious with three sex forms: male, female, and hermaphrodite, where sex determination is controlled by the XY chromosome pair with two slightly different Y chromosomes i.e. Y for male and Y h for hermaphrodite. Sex type determination in papaya, which cannot be determined either by embryo shape or morphology at the juvenile developmental stage, is an essential pre-requisite for crop improvement processes as it helps in identifi cation of fruitful plants. Hence, molecular profi ling could be used as an alternative that provides a quick and reliable identifi cation of sex types in plantlets at initial stages only. In the present study we have validated the sexlinked sequence characterized amplifi ed region (SCAR) marker W11 using PCR detection assay among different cultivars of papaya i.e. dioecious with either female or male and gynodioecious with either female or hermaphrodites and also performed a double-blind test for validating the seedlings of 84 F1 plants, which resulted in their sex determination. The assay clearly gives 800 bp band in male plants in dioecious types and hermaphrodite in gynodioecious plants.

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