Abstract
The recovery and conservation of traditional fruit tree cultivars is a necessity that faces a short window of opportunity due to accelerating cultivar erosion. Several efforts to preserve old material took place before the widespread use of molecular markers, but often that material has not been conserved in ex situ germplasm collections. Here we present a case in Spain where a thorough inventory of local fruit tree species was performed in the 1950s with detailed data of the origin of each genotype. However, from most of that material the only remnants are an old stone collection. We developed a protocol in apricot (Prunus armeniaca) to obtain DNA from maternal tissues of the stones of a sufficient quality to be amplified by PCR. Then we compared the results obtained with the profiles obtained from cultivars currently conserved in ex situ germplasm collections. The results highlight the lost and preserved variability and help to prioritize the recovery of particular cultivars. The approach used in this work provides information on genetic erosion that has taken place in fruit tree species, but could also be applied to other plant species.
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