Genetic similarity among Tunisian cultivated olive estimated through SSR markers

Abstract

Olive (Olea europaea L. subsp. europaea var. europaea) is one of the oldest fruit tree in the Mediterranean basin, and is cultivated for oil and canned fruit. Part of this interest is driven by the economic importance of olive oil which is increasing throughout the world due to its beneficial effect to human health. In Tunisia, olive has great socio-economic importance, with more than 60 millions olive trees cultivated for olive oil production including a wide range of cultivars which are widely extended from the north to the south regions of the country for its high economic value. Here, we applied microsatellites (SSRs) molecular markers to assess the genetic variability of the most important Tunisian olive cultivars. In total, the 10 simple sequence repeats (SSR) loci revealed 73 alleles with a mean number of 07 alleles per locus were detected.The polymorphism index content (PIC) values were high (0.72) ranging from 0.86 at GAPU 103 to 0.56 at EMO 90. The analysis of the dendrogram showed six main separate groups.

Genetic Structure and Core Collection of Olive Germplasm from Albania Revealed by Microsatellite Markers

“…Weak clustering in relation to the fruit end-use was observed in the overall sample set, in line with the findings of Abdelhamid et al [ 57 ]. Only native genotypes, especially those from the central region, showed fairly good clustering according to their fruit end-use.…”

“…The analyses revealed in total 203 alleles, with an average 7.8 alleles per locus, revealing a high level of variability within a sample set. The obtained average number of alleles per locus is in the same range as that reported for: 489 Italian olive varieties (7.6) [ 21 ], 84 Tunisian accessions (8) [ 49 ], 30 cultivars from Southern Italy (8.8) [ 50 ], 48 cultivars from the Iranian olive collection (9) [ 51 ], 108 accessions from the Davis collection, USA (9.93) [ 52 ], higher than that reported for 10 Turkish cultivars (4.57) [ 53 ], 211 Italian olive cultivars from Southern Italy (6.82) [ 16 ], 10 Iranian cultivars (5.6) [ 54 ], 60 Brazilian accessions (6) [ 47 ], 27 accessions from Istria (6.75) [ 55 ], 19 cultivars from the Slovenian olive collection (6.8) [ 56 ], 33 Tunisian accessions (7) [ 57 ], and lower than that reported for 142 Italian cultivars from Emilia-Romagna (10.2) [ 58 ], 73 olive trees, including wild, cultivated, and ancient trees of Sardinia, Italy (10.46) [ 13 ], 46 Portugese cultivars (11) [ 59 ], 77 olive cultivars from the two olive collections, World Olive Germplasm Bank (WOGB), Spain, and Agricultural Research Council-Olive Growing and Oil Industry Research Centre collection (CRA-OLI) (12.2) [ 60 ], 505 accessions derived from 14 olive growing countries in the OWGB germplasm of Marrakech (12.5) [ 18 ], 118 cultivars from the main Mediterranean olive-cultivating countries (13.2) [ 15 ], 30 wild and 104 cultivated ancient olive trees of the Andalusian region, Spain (13.64) [ 61 ], 104 Greek accessions (13.5) [ 62 ], and 158 samples of wild and cultivated olives from three olive growing areas in Spain (16.5) [ 12 ]. The high number of alleles obtained in some studies may be due to the use of a large amount of highly diversified plant material [ 60 , 63 ], as well as the high number of samples employed in the analysis.…”

Genetic relationships analysis of olive cultivars grown in China

“…SSR and ISSR marker systems were combined in this study and showed that the high polymorphism rate (Tables 3 and 4) is consistent with the results from previous reports on olive genetic diversity based on different molecular markers (Gomes et al, 2009;Souza et al, 2012;Abdelhamid et al, 2013;Asadiar et al, 2013;Trujillo et al, 2014). These results were tested repeatedly in different laboratories and showed stable results.…”

Genetic Characterization of Apulian Olive Germplasm as Potential Source in New Breeding Programs

“…Algeria counts approximately 150 olive cultivars according to Hauville [52], while recent studies recognize the existence of only 36 varieties, with Chemlal and Sigoise being predominant throughout the country [28,53]. Similarly, genotypes cultivated in Syria and Tunisia might be less than reported due to several cases of sinonymy [54,55].…”