Articles
ASSESSMENT OF THE VARIABILITY OF VENEZUELAN GUAVA LANDRACES BY MICROSATELLITES
Article number
849_16
Pages
147 – 154
Language
English
Abstract
Guava is one of the neotropical fruits with major economic value in the world.
In spite of the former tradition of crop growth and consumption of guava in Venezuela, its cultivation has been performed carelessly, since an appropriate management of the crop taking into account recent advances in modern agriculture has not been carried out.
In addition, research in the field is scarce in the country, with the exception of continuous and successful efforts in the field of phytopathology.
Rational programs of genetic improvement have not been performed so far, and there are no germplasm banks that may account for the diversity that Venezuela possesses.
In this way, neither the commercially cultivated guavas nor the guava landraces have been characterized phenotypically or genotypically, ignoring the number and variability of all the varieties and types present in the country.
In the present research, we evaluated the genotypic variability of Venezuelan guava landraces using SSR markers.
To attain this goal, 31 guava accessions from different regions of Venezuela were selected, which now belong to a recently established ex situ germplasm facility of Myrtaceae at Universidad de Los Andes.
All samples were evaluated for 16 microsatellite loci, using primers specific for guava.
All evaluated loci were highly polymorphic, observing up to 100% of polymorphism and detecting several alleles per locus.
These results reveal the great genetic diversity of the natural population of P. guajava in Venezuela, which seems to be associated with its geographical distribution.
Finally, these microsatellites allowed us to characterize genetically the accessions of the germplasm bank, which in the future will enable the monitoring, genotyping and selection of specific individuals during the development of coherent programs of genetic improvement.
In spite of the former tradition of crop growth and consumption of guava in Venezuela, its cultivation has been performed carelessly, since an appropriate management of the crop taking into account recent advances in modern agriculture has not been carried out.
In addition, research in the field is scarce in the country, with the exception of continuous and successful efforts in the field of phytopathology.
Rational programs of genetic improvement have not been performed so far, and there are no germplasm banks that may account for the diversity that Venezuela possesses.
In this way, neither the commercially cultivated guavas nor the guava landraces have been characterized phenotypically or genotypically, ignoring the number and variability of all the varieties and types present in the country.
In the present research, we evaluated the genotypic variability of Venezuelan guava landraces using SSR markers.
To attain this goal, 31 guava accessions from different regions of Venezuela were selected, which now belong to a recently established ex situ germplasm facility of Myrtaceae at Universidad de Los Andes.
All samples were evaluated for 16 microsatellite loci, using primers specific for guava.
All evaluated loci were highly polymorphic, observing up to 100% of polymorphism and detecting several alleles per locus.
These results reveal the great genetic diversity of the natural population of P. guajava in Venezuela, which seems to be associated with its geographical distribution.
Finally, these microsatellites allowed us to characterize genetically the accessions of the germplasm bank, which in the future will enable the monitoring, genotyping and selection of specific individuals during the development of coherent programs of genetic improvement.
Authors
Y. Aranguren, A. Briceño, G. Fermin
Keywords
molecular markers, biodiversity, germplasm, Psidium guajava, SSR
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