Evaluation of Olives Cultivated in Southern Italy by Simple Sequence Repeat Markers

Abstract

<jats:p>Olive (<jats:italic>Olea europaea</jats:italic> L.) is a species of great economic importance in the Mediterranean basin. Italy is very important for the olive industry; in fact, olive's genetic patrimony is very rich and characterized by an abundance of cultivars. At present, the majority of ancient landraces are vegetatively propagated by farm. It is likely that the number of cultivars is underestimated because of inadequate information on minor local cultivars that are widespread in different olive-growing areas. The existence of many cultivars reinforces the need for a reliable identification method. It is important to improve the ex situ plant germplasm collection and fairly to characterize all cultivars for future breeding programs. In the present report, we used 11 loci microsatellites to characterize 211 olive cultivars of an olive collection cultivated in six regions of southern Italy. These regions represent the major area for olive cultivation in Italy and have a strategic geographical location in the Mediterranean basin. The dendrogram obtained, using the unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean clustering algorithm, depicts the pattern of relationships between the studied cultivars. There is a clear structuring of the variability relative to the geographic origin of olive cultivars. This work, for the very high number of the Italian olive cultivars analyzed, highlights the degree and distribution of genetic diversity of this species for better exploitation of olive resources and for the design of plant breeding programs. Besides, the use of molecular markers, like simple sequence repeats, is imperative to build a database for cultivar analysis, for traceability of processed food, and for appropriate management of olive germplasm collections.</jats:p>

Genetic Biodiversity of Italian Olives (Olea europaea) Germplasm Analyzed by SSR Markers

“…Four of these loci were included in the best consensus set of SSR markers [18] that has already been used for genetic structure studies [14]. …”

“…SSR amplification was carried out as described by Muzzalupo et al [14]. The amplification products were analyzed by means of a 2100 Bio-Analyzer instrument (Agilent Technologies, Waldbronn, Germany) with the 2100 BioSizing software (version A.02.12) using DNA 500 LabChip kit.…”

Vessel occlusion in three cultivars of Olea europaea naturally exposed to Xylella fastidiosa in open field

“…Among Mediterranean countries, Italy occupies a very important place in the olive industry being one of the main countries, which contribute to the worldwide olive production (Lanfranchi & Giannetto, ; Muzzalupo & Perri, ). Among the Italian regions, Apulia is the most productive with the greatest areas of olive cultivation (Lanfranchi & Giannetto, ) and a rich varietal assortment (Muzzalupo & Perri, ). At present, more than 1,200 different olive cultivars have been described in Italy (Bartolini & Petruccelli, ).…”

Molecular characterization and identification of a group of local Olea europaea L. varieties

“…SSR markers have been used to characterize olive cultivars, to study interor intra-cultivar diversity and to establish relationships between cultivars, belonging to the whole Mediterranean Basin (Belaj et al 2004;La Mantia et al 2005;Sarri et al 2006;Poljuha et al 2008;Omrani-Sabbaghi et al 2007;Rony et al 2009;Bracci et al 2009;Alba et al 2009). Nevertheless, hundreds of minor cultivars in the Mediterranean Basin are still waiting to be characterized (Cipriani et al 2002;Muzzalupo et al 2009). …”