GENETIC RELATIONSHIPS AMONG PISTACIA VERA L. F1 HYBRIDS AND THEIR PARENTS (P. VERA×HERMAPHRODITE GENOTYPES OF P. ATLANTICA) USING SSR MARKERS

Abstract

This research was conducted at the Scientific Agricultural Research center in Sweida province during (2014-2015). Breeding program was assessed in the aim to insert the bisexual phenomena of P.atlantica species (3 different hermaphrodite genotypes PA12, PA35, and PA37 as donators of pollen grains) to the commercial cultivars of P.vera (Ashouri and Batouri). Genetic relationships among the previous species and their progenies (F1, 6 genotypes of crossing program) was studied using 20 specific SSRs primer pairs, 16 of them were able to detect PCR amplification. Simple Sequence Repeat (SSR) segregation produced 44 putative alleles, out of which 40 were polymorphic (90.91%). Genetic similarity between the hybrids and their parents were closer to their female than to their male parents except for the hybrid HB3,which revealed a genetic distance 0.37 with its female parent (Batouri cultivar FB) and 0.43 with its male parent (PA35 hermaphrodite P.atlantica genotype). The UPGMA cluster plots based on Jaccard’s coefficient grouped the genotypes into two main clusters. The number of alleles revealed by each SSR analysis ranged from 1 to 8, with a level of expected heterozygosity (He) 0.496, observed heterozygosity (Ho) 0.25, and Marker Index (MI) 19.84. These results suggested the efficiency of SSR markers for distinguishing lineage genetic studies in the Pistacia spp. in breeding programs to elicit new cultivars, in particularly the primer pairs Ptms-7, EPVM021, EPVM016, and EPVF019 which may form the platform to detect sex expression in the genus Pistacia.