Evaluation of Genetic Diversity by DNA Barcoding of Local Tomato Populations from North-Western Romania

Marin Căprar,Cosmin Sicora,Diana M Chende,Oana Sicora,Cristina M Copaci,Radu Șumălan

doi:10.15835/nbha45110601

Abstract

Tomato is one of the most important crops worldwide. DNA barcoding is a molecular based method that has been successfully used for species identification, but a few studies have used this method for cultivated varieties identification. The aim of this study was to test the utility of DNA barcoding for the identification of five local salt tolerant tomato varieties and two commercial varieties. To assess the genetic diversity of tomato varieties, the non-coding plastid trnH-psbA intergenic spacer and three plastid regions (rbcL, rpoC1, rpoB) were used. Based on the sequence variation of the trnH-psbA barcode, three haplotypes were detected among the seven tomato varieties. A neighbor-joining tree was generated and separated the local tomato varieties from the commercial varieties into two distinct clusters. We found very low levels of variation in the chosen plastial markers, but additional markers could be tested in order to assess the utility of DNA barcodes in tomato varieties identification.

Highlights

Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) is an important vegetable from the Solanaceae family, cultivated worldwide due to its good flavor and rich source of nutrients (Sun et al, 2014)
The lack of sequence variation did not allow to separate the samples into different tomato varieties, and after the BLAST search these loci were identified at genus level (Solanum)
TrnH-psbA sequences were correctly identified at species level, as Solanum lycopersicum with 99% identity

Summary

Introduction

Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) is an important vegetable from the Solanaceae family, cultivated worldwide due to its good flavor and rich source of nutrients (Sun et al, 2014). It is a well-known model species for study fruit development and metabolite accumulation. For evaluating genetic variation and phylogenetic relationships among tomato varieties, different molecular methods have been used: RAPD (Carelli et al, 2006), RFLP (Asamizu and Ezura, 2009), AFLP and SSR (García-Martínez et al, 2006; Benor et al, 2008). SNP methodology reveals patterns of genetic variation between cultivated landraces and varieties of tomato (Sim et al, 2012; Corrado et al, 2014)

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Conclusion