POTENTIAL RAPD APRICOT MARKER LINKED TO PPV RESISTANCE

Abstract

Sharka (plum pox virus or PPV) is the most economically important virus disease of fruit crops in Europe. The sharka virus became the most limiting factor for apricot crops and a severe problem for other Prunus species. The evaluated progeny in this study was a controlled intraspecific cross between: 'Vestar' (female parent), a Slovak cultivar susceptible to PPV and 'Stark Early Orange' (male parent), an American self-compatible cultivar resistant to PPV. The evaluated population consisted of 32 individuals. The basic screening of 155 primers was used to find the group of primers able to distinguish susceptible, resistant and immune cultivar. Twenty primers were chosen giving repeatable strong and middle strong bands. They were subsequently used for the RAPD reactions within the individuals. Among twenty primers, only twelve segregated in evaluated progeny. This segregation was compared with results obtained from evaluation of sharka resistance after artificial inoculation in greenhouse. Among selected primers, one potential marker OPX6-330 was found. Out of thirty-two progenies obtained from an evaluated crossing, sixteen scored resistant and sixteen scored susceptible. Identity of classified resistance and values obtained from RAPD analysis was 78.1 percent. The probability (p) values for the ratios (1:1) in this populations are greater than 0.05. These results indicated an approximate segregation ratio of 1:1 for susceptible and resistant, suggesting a single dominant gene, which probably may be involved in controlling the resistance to PPV-D strain. In the future, this population will be screened again, and other population will be also tested.