ABSTRACT. With the development of chrysanthemum breeding in recent years, an increasing number of wild species in genera related to Chrysanthemum were introduced to extend the genetic resources and facilitate the genetic improvement of chrysanthemums via hybridization. However, few simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers are available for marker-assisted breeding and population genetic studies of chrysanthemum and closely related species. Expressed sequence tags (ESTs) in public databases and cross-species transferable markers are considered to be a cost-effective means for developing sequencebased markers. In this study, 25 EST-SSRs were successfully developed from Chrysanthemum EST sequences for Chrysanthemum morifolium and closely related species. In total, 4164 unigene sequences were assembled from 7180 ESTs of chrysanthemum in GenBank, which were subsequently used to screen for the presence of microsatellites with the Development of EST-SSR markers for chrysanthemum SSRIT software. The screening criteria were 8, 5, 4, and 3 repeating units for di-, tri-, tetra-, and penta-and higher-order nucleotides, respectively. Moreover, 310 SSR loci from 296 sequences were identified, and 198 primer pairs for SSR amplification were designed with the Primer Premier 5.0 software, of which 25 SSR loci showed polymorphic amplification in 52 species and varieties belonging to Chrysanthemum, Ajania, and Opisthopappus. The application of EST-SSR markers to the identification of intergeneric hybrids between Chrysanthemum and Ajania was demonstrated. Therefore, EST-SSRs can be developed for species that lack gene sequences or ESTs by utilizing ESTs of closely related species.

ABSTRACT. In lily flowers, the volatile ester methyl benzoate is one of the major and abundant floral scent compounds; however, knowledge regarding the biosynthesis of methyl benzoate remains unknown for Lilium. In this study, we isolated a benzoic acid/salicylic acid carboxyl methyltransferase (BSMT) gene, LiBSMT, from petals of Lilium 'Yelloween'. The gene has an open reading frame of 1083 base pairs (bp) and encodes a protein of 41.05 kDa. Sequence alignment and phylogenetic analyses of LiBSMT revealed 40-50% similarity with other known benzenoid carboxyl methyltransferases in other plant species, and revealed homology to BSMT of Oryza sativa.