Proceedings of the XLVI Italian Society of Agricultural Genetics - SIGA Annual Congress

Giardini Naxos, Italy - 18/21 September, 2002

ISBN 88-900622-3-1

Poster Abstract - 1.10

GENETIC DIVERSITY AND CULTIVAR IDENTIFICATION IN OLIVE BY MICROSATELLITE MARKERS

MONTEMURRO C.*, PASQUALONE A.**, SIMEONE R.*, FERRARA E.***, BLANCO A.*

*) Dipartimento di Biologia e Chimica Agro-forestale ed ambientale (Di.B.C.A.), Università di Bari

**) Dipartimento di Progettazione e Gestione dei Sistemi Agro-zootecnici e forestali (Pro.Ge.S.A.), Università di Bari

***) Dipartimento di Scienze delle Produzioni Vegetali, Università di Bari

Olea europaea L., microsatellite markers, genetic diversity

Olive (Olea europaea L.) is a cultivated species for the production of high quality oil for human consumption. The crop, distibuted throughout the Mediterranean basin, presents a very high number of cultivars difficult to recognize on the basis of morpho-physiological traits, so that some cases of homonymy and synonymy still exist. Molecular markers are independent by environmental conditions and are characterised by higher polymorphisms than morphological and biochemical markers. Some kinds of molecular markers, such as RAPDs, AFLPs and ISSRs, have been proposed and used to achieve a better distinction of cultivars as well as to assess the genetic variability of wild and cultivated germplasm. Recently microsatellite markers have been developed in O. europaea . The aim of this research was to use microsatellite markers to assess the genetic distances within a representative sample of Mediterranean germplasm as well as to distinguish olive cultivars. A total of 60 cultivars native of Italy, Spain, France and Greece was analyzed with sixty eight primers pairs of microsatellite markers; primer sequences were described by Sefc et al. (2000), Carriero et al. (2002), Cipriani et al. (2002) and Maggini (personal communication). A preliminary screening was done on a set of 15 cultivars to choose the most polymorphic primers, and thus avoiding useless amplifications. Amplified fragments ranged from 110 to 300 bp and a mean ratio of polymorphic bands/amplified bands of 0,46 was found. A dendrogram of genetic distances was elaborated and almost all the cultivars resulted to be distinguishable with a few cases of probable homonymy. This study enabled the assessment of genetic relationships and the discrimination of the cultivars. The accurate cultivar identification is necessary to satisfy the requirements of the Community Directive (Dir. 92/34, 93/48, 93/64, 93/79 CEE) for the marketing of C.A.C. (Community Agriculture Conformitas) plant material.

References:

Carriero F. Fontanazza G. Cellini F. Giorio G.,2002. Identification of simple sequence repeats (SSRs) in olive (Olea europaea L.). Theoretical Applied Genetics 104: 301-307.

Cipriani G. Marrazzo M.T. Marconi R. Cimato A. Testolin R., 2002. Microsatellite markers isolated in olive (Olea europaea L.) suitable for individual fingerprinting and reveal polymorphism within ancient cultivars. Theoretical Applied Genetics 104: 223-228.

Sefc K.M., Lopes M.S., Mendoca D., Rodrigues Dos Santos M., Laimer Da Camara Machado M., Da Camara Machado A.., 2000. Identification of microsatellite loci in olive (Olea europaea L.) and their characterization in Italian and Iberian olive trees. Molecular Ecology 9 (8): 1171-1173