Detecting and determining self-incompatibility alleles in almond genotypes using molecular method.

Abstract

Abstract One of the problems in almond production is self-incompatibility in this plant, which is considered as an important improvement point for this tree. Self-incompatibility causes non-uniformity and garden management problems. Most cultivars of almonds have gametophytic self-incompatibility that is controlled by a multi-allelic gene site. The inoculation inhibitor factor in this inhibitory system is the stop of pollen tube growth in the style. This study aims to detect and determine the self-compatible genotype from among the studied samples and determine the self-incompatibility alleles in the studied masses. For the experiment, the leaf samples were collected from 100 almond genotypes that had good products in recent years. The DNA of young leaf samples in these genotypes was extracted using Gept and Celeg (1989) method with a few changes. Today, various methods have been invented for detecting the genotypes and self-compatible cultivars from selfincompatible cultivars as well as S alleles in almonds, including the PCR method. Therefore, in order to detect S alleles in different almond and some hybrid genotypes, the exclusive primer pairs, including AS1II-AmyC5R, ConF-ConR and Cebador2-Cebador8, were used in the polymerase chain reaction. All of the primers have been used by other researchers to detect almond alleles and the effectiveness of these pairs of primers was confirmed in this experiment. Using the AS1IIAmyC5R and Cebador2-Cebador8 primers, the Sf allele with the size of 1200 base pairs was detected. Using the ConF-ConR pair of primer, the S1, S2, S3, S10, S11, S23, and S31 alleles were detected in the self-incompatible samples. Using AS1II-AmyC5R pair of primer, the known alleles of S3, Sf, S2, S1, S5, S10, S11, S23, and S13 were detected. The other bands obtained from the PCR were related to the known self-incompatibility alleles that might be considered as new alleles. In the study population in this research, S1, S2, S3, and S11 alleles had higher frequency.