Determining the parental combinations of the triploid acid citrus cultivars ‘Yellow Bell’ and ‘Tahiti lime’ using DNA marker analyses

Abstract

Triploid breeding is an effective way to obtain seedless hybrids. In addition to artificial breeding, some triploid cultivars occur naturally in the genus Citrus. ‘Yellow Bell’, a new lemon cultivar recently patented in Japan was selected from the small seed of an open-pollinated ‘Villafranca’ fruit. Therefore, it has an unknown pollen parent. To characterize the pollen parent of ‘Yellow Bell’, possible parental cultivars were genotyped using simple sequence repeat markers, and then the parental relationships were estimated by establishing the inheritance of tri-allelic marker genotypes. As a result, the pollen-donating parent of ‘Yellow Bell’ was determined to be ‘Summer Fresh’, which was growing 40 m from the maternal tree in the same orchard. The parentage of ‘Tahiti lime’, a lime cultivar having a long cultivation history, was evaluated in a similar manner and it was confirmed that ‘Mexican lime’ and a true lemon cultivar were the parents.