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

Verona, Italy - 24/27 September, 2003

ISBN 88-900622-4-X

 

Poster Abstract - 2.14

 

AFLP MARKERS TO STUDY THE GENETIC RELATIONSHIPS AMONG THE MAIN ITALIAN TABLE CULTIVARS (OLEA EUROPAEA L.)

 

P. LABOMBARDA, G. FONTANAZZA

 

Istituto per i Sistemi Agricoli e Forestali del Mediterraneo - Sezione di Olivicoltura di Perugia - CNR, via Madonna Alta 128, 06128 Perugia

p.labombarda@iro.pg.cnr.it

 

 

Olea europaea L., AFLP, table cultivars, genetic diversity

 

AFLP analysis was performed on 19 table and double purpose cultivars: 16 Italian and 3 foreign cultivars (“Gordal”, Picholine” and “Picholine Marocaine”) which showed morphological affinities with some of the Italian cultivars analysed.

 

The plant material analysed comes from the Institute germplasm collection where they are in the same environmental conditions.

 

A total of 185 polymorphic fragments were identified and used to calculate pairwise genetic distances and to subsequently construct a dendrogram which clearly shows the polymorphism characteristic of the cultivars studied. There are not homonyms and synonyms. Particularly interesting is the case of “Giarraffa”, “Gioconda” and “Gordal”. “Giarraffa” is a Sicilian cultivar of ancient origin wide spread in the island and with an economic importance. In Spain according to a diffusion order “Gordal” is the second after the cultivar “Manzanilla” . “Gordal”, as reported by some authors (Mulè et al. 2001), seems to be introduced in Sicily as “Gioconda”. On the contrary our molecular inquiry shows that “Gioconda” and “Gordal” are genetically distinct and that the similarity degree (SC=0.98) between “Giarraffa” and “Gioconda” is higher than the one observed between “Gordal” and “Gioconda”.