Molecular Genetic Diversity in the Turkish National Melon Collection and Selection of a Preliminary Core Set

Abstract

<jats:p>Turkey is a secondary center of diversity for melon (<jats:italic>Cucumis melo</jats:italic>) and is home to a variety of regional morphotypes. This diversity is housed in a national germplasm repository with more than 500 accessions. Molecular genetic variability of 209 melon genotypes from 115 accessions of this collection was characterized using amplified fragment length polymorphisms (AFLPs). Ten AFLP primer combinations yielded 279 reproducible fragments, which were used for dendrogram and principal coordinate analyses. These analyses showed two major clusters of Turkish melons: one group contained highly similar genotypes (maximum Dice dissimilarity coefficient of 0.18), whereas the other group was genetically more diverse (maximum dissimilarity 0.41). Although average dissimilarity was low (0.13), a broad range of genetic diversity was observed in the collection. A marker allele richness strategy was used to select a core set of 20 genotypes representing the allelic diversity of the AFLP data. The core set had double the average diversity (0.26) of the entire set and represented the major morphotypes present in the collection. Molecular genetic diversity of the core set was further validated using simple sequence repeat marker data (116 polymorphic fragments), which confirmed that the selected core set retained high levels of molecular genetic diversity.</jats:p>

Relationship between geographical origin, seed size and genetic diversity in faba bean (Vicia faba L.) as revealed by SSR markers

“…Red, blue and yellow represent large, medium and smallseeded genotypes, respectively of the entire collection (Brown 1989), a larger core set was chosen because of high genetic diversity. Similar to this result, Turkish melon (Cucumis melo), sesame (Sesamum indicum) and opium poppy (Papaver somniferum) germplasm core sets represented similar proportions of the entire collections (10 to 20%) (Frary et al 2013(Frary et al , 2015unpublished data). The core collection should be further examined for yield, nutritional, disease, and drought resistance traits.…”

Genetic diversity among melon ( Cucumis melo L.) accessions revealed by morphological traits and ISSR markers

“…An understanding of the extent of genetic diversity and relationships among different local genotypes is beneficial both for the identification and effective conservation of genetic resources, and for the success of breeding programs (Solmaz et al, 2016). Genetic diversity in melon has been analyzed using different molecular markers, ranging from phenotypic (Escribano and Lázaro, 2009;Szamosi et al, 2010) and isozymic (McCreight et al, 2004) to molecular DNA markers, including random amplification of polymorphic DNA (Sensoy et al, 2007;Soltani et al, 2010), amplified fragment length polymorphism (Frary et al, 2013;Shamasbi et al, 2014), simple sequence repeat primers (Monforte et al, 2003;Tzitzikas et al, 2009;Kaçar et al, 2016), inter-simple sequence repeat (ISSR) primers (Parvathaneni et al, 2011;Sestili et al, 2011), and other DNA markers.…”

A Review on the diversity of Melon

“…The most ancient records on cultivated melon appeared in Egyptian mural paintings (32). Pangalo studied a live collection of 3000 specimens of melons and proposed a multilevel taxonomy based on homologous series (22,33). Then he subdivided four C. melo varieties in the homologous series into two homologous subspecioides, cultus or cultivated types and agrestis or wild types, and each subspeciode again divided into "types."…”