SSR markers for characterization and identification of cultivars of Olea europaea L. in the Abruzzo and Mouse regions in south-central Italy.

摘要

A large number of varieties of Olea europaea L. are present in the Mediterranean basin, which gives rise to difficulties in characterization, management and preservation of germplasms. Nine simple-sequence-repeat (SSR) primer pairs were utilized to characterize 44 olive accessions, corresponding to the majority of the autochthonous germplasm of the Abruzzo and Mouse regions. All microsatellites were polymorphic, showing from two to seven alleles per locus (average 4.3 alleles per locus). The expected heterozygosity ranged from 0.34 to 0.76 and the discrimination power varied from 0.50 to 0.87. The set of microsatellite discriminated all varieties investigated and a subset of six SSR primer pairs could also identify all cultivars. Moreover, two distinct clusters of olive varieties were clearly recognizable. Thus, microsatellite markers are useful for fingerprinting olive varieties and can be used to generate a database for future identification.