Abstract
Apple (malus domestica Borkh.), which is a widely cultivated, important and economic fruit crop with nutritive and medicinal importance, has emerged as a model horticultural crop in this post-genomic era. Wild apple resources are important and they develop gradually in apple industry and genetic diversity. In this study, two molecular markers (inter-simple sequence repeats, ISSR and sequence-specific amplification polymorphism, S-SAP) were evaluated for genetic analysis of 31 wild apple resources in Shandong. A total of 20 ISSR primers were used and 110 polymorphic bands were amplified. Five S-SAP primer sets yielded a total of 496 bands, of which 201 (40.52%) were polymorphic. The similarity coefficient between resources ranged from 0.70 to 0.94 for ISSR analysis and from 0.66 to 0.95 using the S-SAP methodology. This study indicates that the results obtained based on the dendrograms constructed using unweighted pair-group using arithmetic average (UPGMA) cluster analysis were significantly correlated. The ISSR and S-SAP markers were found to be useful for wild apple resources identification and assessment of phonetic relationships. Key words: Apple, wild resource, inter-simple sequence repeats (ISSR), sequence-specific amplification polymorphism (S-SAP).
Highlights
Apple is an important economic fruit crop widely cultivated in temperate and sub-tropical climate
The inter-simple sequence repeats (ISSR) and sequence-specific amplification polymorphism (S-SAP) markers were found to be useful for wild apple resources identification and assessment of phonetic relationships
A total of 20 primers were used to screen for polymorphisms in 31 wild apple resources from Shandong province (Table 2)
Summary
Apple is an important economic fruit crop widely cultivated in temperate and sub-tropical climate. It belongs to the rose family (Rosaceae) of order Rosales and class Magnoliopsida (Bhatti and Jha, 2010). Vated apple is Malus domestica, while its wild relatives are Malus sieversii and Malus sylvestris (Coart et al, 2006). With the ever-growing requirements for environmental protection and food safety in the production of high quality apples, the modern apple breeding becomes more and more dependent on resistant gene resources from the wild genetic resources in the genus (Crosby et al, 1992). Information on the origin of apple and its phylogenetic relationship with the closely related species will become more and more important for future apple industry.
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