ISHS Acta Horticulturae 293: IX International Symposium on Apricot Culture
ISOZYME POLYMORPHISM IN APRICOT CULTIVARS |
| Authors: | S. Battistini, S. Sansavini |
| Abstract:
Horizontal starch-gel electrophoresis was employed to identify apricot cultivars or their genetically uniform groups. Enzymatic polymorphism was shown by the recorded zimograms of the four enzyme systems MDH, AcPH, EST and PGM; a total of 50 cultivars with provenances representing eight countries were tested. The combination of the enzyme patterns led to an overall determination of 16 isozyme phenotypes corresponding to as many groups, each of which including one or more cultivars. Noteworthy is the fact that the twenty-two Italian cultivars fall within only four groups (the first with cvs. "Boccuccia" and "Palummella", the second with "Monaco bello" and "Vitillo", the third with "Portici" and "San Francesco" and one in the fourth). This does not rule out the identification of other enzymes and, hence, of other groups, thereby resulting in a further discrimination among cultivars. Similarity-matrix analysis was employed to generate a dendrogram assessing the "genetic distance" from one cultivar group to another. The US cvs. "Stark Early Orange" and "Goldrich", for example, were very distant from the Italian cultivars, whereas others (e.g. "Earliril") were relatively near to the Italian as well as to certain Spanish and French varieties. Despite its evident limitations, this technique proved to be very useful, and holds out the possibility of determining cultivars within the individual groups via the identification of nucleotide-sequence molecular markers of individual genes (i.e. RFLP technique). | |
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