CURRENT STATUS OF CONSERVATION, EVALUATION AND USEFULNESS OF WILD OLIVE GERMPLASM

Abstract

Wild olives (Olea europaea subsp. europaea var. sylvestris) may offer new and interesting plant material which can be used either as rootstocks or genitors in breeding programs. Recent studies, carried out at in situ and ex situ level, and focused on morpho-agronomic and genetic (by means of SSRs, DArTs and cpDNA markers) diversity, have shown that wild olives include a great variability. In this sense, prospecting surveys have made possible the establishment of a collection of wild olive trees and related subspecies coming from different environmental conditions. The wild olive tree collection held at IFAPA, Cordoba, Spain, is being evaluated for agronomic characters of interest, including resistance to Verticillium dahliae Kleb. Additionally, in order to test the suitability of wild olives for breeding, the segregation of two open pollination progenies coming from a wild olive located in a forest in Cadiz, southern Spain, and ‘Picual’ respectively, were compared at both morpho-agronomical and molecular level. As expected, seedlings from the wild progeny produced fruits of low weight and oil content but also showed significantly shorter juvenile period than the ones coming from ‘Picual’ open pollination progeny. Similarly, seedlings from two progenies coming from the cross of ‘Picual’ with two wild olive trees showed shorter juvenile period than the one observed in the progenies coming from crosses between cultivars. Our results suggest the utility of wild germplasm in olive breeding that needs to be better known, evaluated and preserved.