Abstract
Fig (Ficus carica L.) tree is cultivated worldwide and is highly appreciated for its fruit, which is consumed fresh or dried, having high nutritional and pharmaceutical value and for these reasons there is an increasing interest for its cultivation. In the present study, an ex situ collection of 60 fig accessions (41 indigenous Greek and 19 from other Mediterranean countries) was established and its diversity was analyzed using eight simple sequence repeat (SSR) loci. Greek fig genotypes showed relatively low allelic variation (the average number of SSR alleles per locus was 3.75), an excess of heterozygosity (mean He = 0.489 and Ho = 0.557), and extensive outbreeding (mean F index − 0.151). Cluster analysis showed that the established fig population exhibited weak genetic structure, with most of the genetic variation (89%) being present within individual members of the clusters. Both cluster and principal coordinate analysis confirmed that there is little correlation between genetic makeup and geographical origin of the fig accessions. Polymorphism information content with an average of 0.421 was reasonably informative. An identification key scheme for fig cultivars that will be useful in cultivar discrimination and intellectual property protection was developed. This work will contribute to a sustainable fig production regionally and worldwide, through the establishment and conservation of a reference fig collection, providing germplasm for future breeding efforts.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Prof. Mike Roose for critically reviewing of the manuscript.
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We would like to thank the Department of Crop Sciences of the Agricultural University of Athens, Greece, and the Department of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences of the University of Milano, Italy for supporting this research.
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10722_2022_1509_MOESM1_ESM.docx
Figure S1: Electrophoresis of PCR products for some of the fig accession per microsatellite. Accession numbers are shown on top. Electrophoreses were done in 12% non-denaturing polyacrylamide gels. M: DNA ladder (50 bp GeneRuler, Thomas Scientific, USA). M+: DNA ladder as in M with the addition of a known size SSR PCR product. SSR: A known size SSR PCR product. (DOCX 201 KB)
10722_2022_1509_MOESM2_ESM.pdf
Figure S2: Dendrogram showing genetic relationship of 60 Fig accessions per country of origin based on SSR data. The dendrogram constructed in MEGA11 with WNJ using the Nei’s genetic distance calculated by GenAlex. (PDF 17 KB)
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Sclavounos, A., Roussos, P., Milla, S. et al. Genetic diversity of fig (Ficus carica L.) germplasm from the Mediterranean basin as revealed by SSR markers. Genet Resour Crop Evol 70, 1395–1406 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10722-022-01509-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10722-022-01509-0