Easy-PCR-XY kits for date palm and dioecious plants sex-determination using universal PCR-primers

Commercial production of date palm, one of the most important crops in Middle-Eastern countries, is hampered by difficulties in differentiating between male and female plants during early development. To address this issue, in our kits, we identified a sex determination region on the Y chromosome (date-SRY) in the date palm. To accomplish this, we developed a new date-sex determination kit by using the nested PCR method to amplify partial sequences of the data-SRY gene to identify a region of the gene that could be confidently used to identify male date palms. The purpose of the kit is to carry a PCR reaction with the plant DNA templates to determine male or female sex using PCR. The procedure is based on the amplification of a plant’s Sry gene fragment. This gene is shorter by 550 bp on chromosome Y as compared with chromosome X, which allows for the determination of plant’s sex by means of PCR. The expected PCR products are 550 bp long for males or 0 bp for females. The kit is designed to perform experiments during two laboratory applications (I – PCR set-up - 1.5 h; II – electrophoresis - 1.5-2 h). This invention provides novel universal primers that can amplify the fragment of SRY gene of the male human and dioecious plants using polymerase chain reaction (PCR). These primers can generate the molecular signature from any biological material of unknown human origin and dioecious plants male or female, which actually is the characteristic of its sex identity. The present invention relates to the sex determination kits for the dioecious plants, and particularly to genetic sex determination of the dioecious plants based on the first identification of the SRY gene in the dioecious plants.