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 - 2.28

MOLECULAR CHARACTERIZATION OF OLD SWEET CHERRY GENOTYPES USING SSR MARKERS

E. VARASANO, C. RICCIOLINI, A. PORCEDDU

Institute of Plant Genetics, CNR, Via Madonna Alta 130, 06126 Perugia

sweet cherry, microsatellite, heterozigosity, incompatibility

Sweet cherry, (Prunus avium) is cultivated in temperate regions of the world for its edible fruit. Originated in the Caspian and Black seas, cherry plants spread trhough Europe at the times of Roman Empire. Because the first evidence of cherry cultivation was reported not later than the 16^th century it was proposed that cherry domestication occurred indipendently in several areas starting from wild well adapted material. According to this hypothesis the old varieties represent the direct descents of this wild material and it would be ideal for studies aimed at the identification of domestication and adaptation genes.

Microsatellite have emerged as important molecular markers for population studies due to their high polymorphism. In this work we have assesed the variability of 37 old sweet cherry varieties sampled in Tuscany and Umbria at 28 SSR loci. The mean number of alleles was 4,60, the maximum number of alleles per locus was 11 (Bcpt0038) and the minimum 2. The mean heterozigosity was 0,412, the maximum. 0,9714 (Bcpt0038) and the minimum 0,10 (Bcpt-002). The average discrimination power was 0,56, the highest 0,776 (pchgms5) and the lowest 0,151 (Bcpt-004).

To further characterize these old varieties for breeding purpose we determined the genotype at the S locus by S allele specific PCR. Nine different S alleles were detected which identified 12 different incompatibility groups.