“…The improvement of perennial plants, especially fruit species, is a challenging task due to a long juvenile period and seed dormancy, among other factors, which translates into a relatively long generation period (McClure et al, 2014). In A. squamosa , for example, the beginning of flowering of adult plants, originated from seeds, under specific cultivation conditions, would take at least three years (Pereira and Borém, 2021) until the characterization of the fruits, limiting the number of genotypes that can be studied, which makes the breeding process slow and expensive. The PCR assay using a combination of the primers detecting the wild-type and mutant alleles allows plants to be genotyped in the seedling stage, accelerating the breeding program.…”