Genetic Characterization of Pitahaya Accessions Based on Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphism Analysis

Abstract

<jats:p><jats:italic>Hylocereus</jats:italic> (Berger) Britton and Rose and <jats:italic>Selenicereus</jats:italic> (Berger) Britton and Rose are two genera of vine cacti, commonly named pitahaya, that produce fruit that are gaining in popularity as an exotic fruit in many countries. There has also been an increasing interest in these fruits because they can be grown in areas that are prone to drought and heat where other fruit production is not possible. However, there is significant taxonomic confusion regarding species within these genera as well as some uncertainty among named varieties. Amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) was used to genotype a large pitahaya collection to determine if there was redundancy in some of the commonly named varieties as well as to assess the overall diversity of the collection. A total of 51 markers were scored from 230 accessions. Seven distinct clades were found with 126 putative clones but only three clades had high bootstrap (greater than 80%) support and one had moderate support (60%). Some of the differently named varieties were identical based on our analysis, but there was also genotypic diversity within putatively named varieties. The results of this study will help growers and researchers to choose genetically distinct accessions from the germplasm collection to investigate how different accessions perform in their growing regions.</jats:p>

Distinguishing three Dragon fruit (Hylocereus spp.) species grown in Andaman and Nicobar Islands of India using morphological, biochemical and molecular traits

“…Range of number of polymorphic bands (1)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13) and % polymorphism (20-92.8%) obtained in this study was almost comparable with results of Tao et al 61 who obtained as 1-7 and 25-100%, respectively, on 50 red and white pulped dragon fruit accessions in China. Like this, the other PCR based marker systems such as RAPD (Legaria Solano et al 62 in Mexico; Junqueira et al 63 in Brazil; Rifat et al 64 in Bangladesh) and AFLP (Pagliaccia et al 65 in USA) markers were also showed high amount of % polymorphism on dragon fruit accessions grown in different regions of world. Comparable PIC value of ISSR markers (0.49-0.92) reported by Tao et al 61 as in our study (0.42-0.91).…”

Homozygote Depression in Gamete-Derived Dragon-Fruit (Hylocereus) Lines

“…These Hylocereus species bear medium to large (200–800 g) edible fruits with broad scales, various peel and flesh colors, and numerous small soft seeds (Tel-Zur et al, 2004a , 2011b ). Among these species, those cultivated worldwide include: the diploids H. undatus and H. monacanthus , which have white, purple or red flesh and a red peel; the tetraploid H. megalanthus , with white flesh and a yellow spiny peel (Lichtenzveig et al, 2000 ); and the spontaneous (natural) or induced (artificial) interspecific hybrids of these three species (Tel-Zur et al, 2012a ; Pagliaccia et al, 2015 ). Interest in these species has increased markedly in recent years, since they are regarded as exotic fruit crops with high economic potential and as a rich source of natural micronutrients (Wu et al, 2006 ) and phytochemicals with therapeutic activities (Song et al, 2016 ).…”

“…To this end, a long-term breeding program was begun some three decades ago at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) to develop improved hybrids with superior fruit quality, good yields, and enhanced tolerance to extreme temperatures (Tel-Zur, 2013 ). However, this breeding program—like many breeding programs for other minor crops—has been hampered by a variety of factors, including difficulties in applying molecular and other updated breeding approaches, the limited genomic information currently available, and the plants' large genome size and high heterozygosity (Cisneros and Tel-Zur, 2013 ; Plume et al, 2013 ; Pagliaccia et al, 2015 ). In addition to all these factors, 6–10 generations of self-pollination are needed to obtain phenotypically stable homozygote lines.…”

SSR Marker Development and Genetic Identification of Pitaya (<i>Hylocereus</i> spp.) Collected in Okinawa Prefecture, Japan

“…DNA marker analyses are effective to assess such genetic backgrounds. To date, several types of DNA markers have been utilized to assess the genetic diversity of pitaya, including random-amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) (Tel-Zur et al, 2004), inter simple sequence repeats (ISSRs) (Tao et al, 2014), amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) (Pagliaccia et al, 2015), and simple sequence repeats (SSRs) (Pan et al, 2017). Among these DNA markers, SSR markers have several advantages due to high levels of polymorphism, multiple alleles, and co-dominance (Ellegren, 2004).…”