AFLP reveals structural details of genetic diversity within cultivated olive germplasm from the Eastern Mediterranean

Abstract

Amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) analysis was used to assess genetic inter-relationships among olive varieties cultivated in the Eastern Mediterranean Basin. The genotypes sampled included most of the important cultivars from Turkey, Greece and the Middle East and selected genotypes from the Western Mediterranean area. A total of 119 polymorphic markers were generated from five selective primer-pair combinations. The combined data sets generated by just two primer-pairs were adequate to discriminate between all 65 genotypes, while each primer-pair could individually identify up to 64 genotypes. A factorial correspondence analysis (FCA) plot indicated that the cultivars clustered into two relatively modestly defined groups. The first broad group was dominated by cultivars from Turkey but also included genotypes originating from the Middle East (Syria and Lebanon) that collectively formed a tight subcluster. The second group comprised Greek cultivars and those originating from the Western Mediterranean. A significant genetic distance value between Greek and Turkish cultivars was provided by an analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA). There was also evidence of substructure here, with an apparent separation of most Spanish and Italian clones. These findings are in general accordance to previous suggestions of an East-West divergence of olive cultivars, although the dichotomy is less extensive than reported previously and complicated by regional variation within each group.

Molecular characterization of olive cultivars using amplified fragment length polymorphism markers

“…High levels of polymorphism and high degrees of discriminative capacity are the main advantages of AFLP for closely related accessions. Although the AFLP method has been used to identify genetic relationships among olive cultivars throughout the world (Dunja et al, 2004;Owen et al, 2005;Montemurro et al, 2005), the use of this method to determine genetic relationships between cultivars natively grown in Turkey has been limited. The objectives of this study were to characterize 6 cultivars of olive that are grown in Turkey.…”

DNA-Based Approaches for Traceability and Authentication of Olive Oil

“…Currently, there are plenty of reports on the discrimination of olive cultivars using various molecular markers such as ampliied-fragment length polymorphism [51,52], random ampliied polymorphic DN" R"PD [5 ], sequence-characterised ampliied regions [54], simple sequence repeats SSRs [55,56], inter-simple sequence repeats ISSRs [5 ] and singlenucleotide polymorphisms [58,59]. However, only few of them were tested on the identiication of the varietal origin of olive oil.…”

Fruit Germplasm Characterization: Genomics Approaches for the Valorisation of Genetic Diversity

“…Nevertheless, RAPD experiments demonstrate poor reproducibility, which hampers comparison between individual studies. Experiments assessing an organism's AFLP markers are more technically demanding than RAPD but are highly effective in detecting DNA polymorphisms (Angiolillo et al, 1999;Baldoni et al, 2000;Muzzalupo et al, 2007a;Owen et al, 2005). In contrast to a plant species' chloroplast DNA (cpDNA), which occasionally can be insufficiently variable for intra-species comparison (Wolfe et al, 1987;Amane et al, 1999;Lumaret et al, 2000;Besnard et al, 2002), mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) within a given species varies enormously in terms of organization, size, structure, and gene arrangement (Brennicke et al, 1996).…”

“…This technique has also been used to study the genetic diversity within and among a range of Spanish and Italian olive varieties (Sanz-Corte´s et al, 2003). Owen et al, (2005) used AFLP markers to evaluate the structure of genetic diversity among common olive varieties cultivated in the Eastern Mediterranean. Additionally, AFLP analysis, as previously described and has been used in genetic variability studies for about 29 varieties (including oil and table olive varieties originating from Tunisia and other Mediterranean countries) of the genus Olea using nine AFLP primer combinations (Grati-Kamoun et al, 2006).…”