Abstract
The olive is widely cropped in Tunisia where also oleaster trees thrive all around orchards and in natural sites. Little is known on the genetic relationships between the olive crop and oleaster trees in Tunisia. Fifty-two oleaster trees and fifteen cultivars were sampled from Tunisia. SSR genotyping was performed in polyacrylamide gels after fluorescent labeling. We used seven nuclear and two chloroplast SSR markers. AFC analyses showed close genetic relationships between cultivated and oleaster trees. Genetic relationships were also displayed in a dendrogram based on Unweighted Pair Group Method (UPGMA). Five clusters were defined mixing cultivar and oleaster trees suggesting close relationship between some cultivar and some oleaster trees. One oleaster is single in a cluster. The chlorotype SSR markers show probably three olive origins. Some cultivars have the CE chlorotype originates from the East of the Mediterranean basin, the CCK haplotype originates from Maghreb and the COM chlorotype originates from West Mediterranean. The cultivars were 1) introduced from the East; 2) selected in the West; 3) or selected in the North Africa region. The Tunisian oleaster trees carry eastern and western Mediterranean chlorotype CCK, COM and CE.
Highlights
Two olive (Olea europaea subsp. europaea var. europaea) varieties are distinguished by botanists in the Mediterranean basin namely var. europaea which is the cultivated form and var. sylvestris, the wild olive tree or oleaster.The olive is one of both of the oldest tree crops with the fig tree and it is cultivated for oil and table olives
Most oleaster trees clustered on the left with the cultivar C1 (Sayali)
Breton [13] and Breton et al [14] have shown that CE2 and COM (COM1 and COM2 are variant of COM) originated in Cyprus and Tunisia where they are prevalent in oleaster trees
Summary
Two olive (Olea europaea subsp. europaea var. europaea) varieties are distinguished by botanists in the Mediterranean basin namely var. europaea which is the cultivated form and var. sylvestris, the wild olive tree or oleaster.The olive is one of both of the oldest tree crops with the fig tree and it is cultivated for oil and table olives. Europaea) varieties are distinguished by botanists in the Mediterranean basin namely var. Europaea which is the cultivated form and var. Sylvestris, the wild olive tree or oleaster. The olive is the most important oil producing crop in the Mediterranean region. Tunisia is formerly a major producer of olive oil in North Africa. In Tunisia, about 60 million olive trees are cultivated in third of cultivated areas, most of them represented by two prevalent oil cultivars ‘Chétoui’ and ‘Chemlali’. Little is known about the Tunisia oleaster trees and about their genetic relationships with cultivars. Genetic erosion and loss of biodiversity do not seem to be major issues for olive germplasms due to absence of turnover of new genotypes that do not occur as fast as in other woody crops. Old olive trees survive for a long time once abandoned [2,3]
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