PRELIMINARY REPORT ON THE USE OF BIOTECHNOLOGY IN SWEET AND SOUR CHERRY RESEARCH

摘要

The goal of this investigation was to determine genetic differences between autochthonous and introduced cultivars of sweet cherry and between cultivars and types of sour cherry, and to find and optimize a method for the rapid recovery of clonal material. A great number of cherry cultivars and types within the population of cv. Oblacinska sour cherry exist in Croatia and the selection of autochthonous cultivars based on special visible properties for further investigation has been done in previousresearch. Differences were found in a number of important agronomic traits within the populations of cv. Oblacinska sour cherry. It is suspected that autochthonous sweet cherry cultivars are synonyms for known old cultivars, which were introduced randomly and naturalized under local names. In this approach difficulties arise from the effect of non-genetic factors on the expression of certain traits. The genetic/physiological problem of S allele autoincompatibility exists within sweet cherry cultivars. The detection of S alleles is required to determine compatible cultivar pairs in the orchard. Biotechnological methods based on the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) facilitate faster virus detection compared with classical serological methods and indexing.Thermotherapy and tissue culture make it possible to recover valuable clone material for introduction in the premultiplication process.