Paternity Analysis of the Olive Variety “Istrska Belica” and Identification of Pollen Donors by Microsatellite Markers

Abstract

The leading olive variety in Slovenia is “Istrska belica” (Olea europaea L.), which currently represents 70% of all olive trees in productive orchards. Paternity analysis based on microsatellite markers was used for genotyping and identification of the potential pollen donors of “Istrska belica” and for assessing the proportion of self-fertilization in monovarietal olive orchards in the Slovene Istria. Seven microsatellite loci were used for genotyping thirty-one olive embryos from “Istrska belica” trees and for all potential pollen donor varieties, which are grown in the region and could participate as pollinators. Genotyping results and allele identification were performed using the FaMoz software. The most probable pollen donor was assigned to 39% of all analyzed embryos. Among all analyzed embryos no single case of self-fertilization was confirmed. According to the present results, the variety “Istrska belica” was in all cases fertilized by foreign pollen. The results will contribute to defining the new guidelines for farmers regarding the proper management and growing practice in monovarietal olive groves.

Self-Incompatibility Assessment of Some Italian Olive Genotypes (Olea europaea L.) and Cross-Derived Seedling Selection by SSR Markers on Seed Endosperms

“…In particular, the use of microsatellite markers (SSR) is notoriously simply, relatively cheap, reliable, and specie-specific (Sefc et al, 2000; Carriero et al, 2002; Cipriani et al, 2002). In olive, they have been used for different purposes, such as cultivar identification (Alba et al, 2009), assessment of genetic diversity (Albertini et al, 2011), evaluation of relationships among cultivated and wild olives (Boucheffa et al, 2017), designation of geographic origin (Sarri et al, 2006; Montemurro et al, 2015), genetic mapping (De la Rosa et al, 2003), construction of core collections (Haouane et al, 2011), oil traceability (Pasqualone et al, 2013, 2016; Sabetta et al, 2017), paternity test (De La Rosa et al, 2004; Dìaz et al, 2007; Arbeiter Baruca et al, 2014), and evaluation of polyploidy level (Besnard and Baali-Cherif, 2009).…”

Mutagenesis and Biotechnology Techniques as Tools for Selecting New Stable Diploid and Tetraploid Olive Genotypes and Their Dwarfing Agronomical Characterization

“…Regarding crosses among diploid genotypes, surprisingly, Leccino wt became interfertile with its 2n mutants and, in addition, the 2n mutants also became interfertile among themselves (Table 2). Although pollen contamination during artificial pollination should be excluded, considering the accuracy of the method used in this experiment, the progeny parentage analysis by molecular approaches will be considered in the future, since some authors reported possible risk of contamination (Arbeiter et al, 2014;Díaz et al, 2007). Moreover, high fruit set was observed when the LD mutant was used as pollen donor and Leccino wt as female parent, while Leccino wt used as pollen donor proved to be less fertile (Table 2).…”

Proposal of a New Hybrid Breeding Method Based on Genotyping, Inter-Pollination, Phenotyping and Paternity Testing of Selected Elite F1 Hybrids

“…This method was later applied in several other tree species, for instance in Eucalyptus sp. (Cupertino et al, 2009) and in olives (Baruca-Arbeiter et al, 2014). Paternity testing was also used to identify pollen contamination rate, for instance in loblolly pine (Vidal et al, 2015).…”