Marcadores moleculares no estudo de diversidade de acerola (Malpighia emarginata D.C.) e do gênero Citrus

Abstract

Brazil produces around 41 million tons of fruit annually, moving around U.S. $ 11 billion. Currently Brazil is the largest producer of orange with a crop forecast for 2010 exceeding 19 million tons. Regarding the acerola, Brazil is also the biggest producer and the Northeast region has great importance on the national scene, accounting for 60% of the national production. Despite these promising numbers there is a low diversification of cultivars for both crops, and the situation is more alarming for the citrus culture in Northeast region where 95% of production comes from the Pêra variety. The objective of this work was to acess the genetic variability by the use of ISSR Markers between Citrus varieties that were introduced and recommended to the Northeast region by the Embrapa Mandioca e Fruticultura and also to identify and characterize the genetic variability between accessions from Acerola´s Active Germplasm Bank (AGB) located at the Estação Experimental de Cana-de-açúcar de Carpina (EEAC)/UFRPE through RAPD Markers. The ISSR-PCR method allowed the visualization of a total of 167 loci with the use of 15 primers. 162 (97%) loci exhibited polymorphism and five (3%) were monomorphic. According to the analysis of the dendrogram and the genetic similarity matrix, was possible to group the 15 varieties of sweet orange in a single group with 27% diversity between them and 40% over the five other genotypes, consisting of three lemons, a tangerine and a grapefruit. The high degree of polymorphism observed between the group of oranges and the other five accessions suggests a large genetic variability within the genus, which may be particularly useful in breeding programs aiming to develop new rootstocks adapted to many different environmental conditions as well as the identification of promising varieties in terms of production. The fifteen RAPD primers used showed good amplification, identifying 182 markers. Among these markers, 166 showed polymorphism (91.2%) and 16 were monomorphic. The acerola presents great genetic variability, clearly seen in commercial orchards, as a result of extensive seed propagation, which causes non uniform and unproductive orchards. These markers were analyzed using the UPGMA clustering method. The genetic similarity coefficients ranged from 0.56 (005APE and 040CMF access) to 0.90 (028-CMF and 030-CMF and 026-CMF and 027-CMF). The genotypes were classified into two groups, two subgroups and five smaller groups, gathering hits that share chemical, morphological and production characteristics, noting that individuals with higher production of fruits had the lowest levels of vitamin C. It was observed an inverse relationship between the production of vitamin C and productivity, because in general, higher yielding genotypes had lower levels of ascorbic acid, while those that produce fruits rich in vitamin C, have low production of fruit. The analysis of the results revealed, by genetic diversity of the access, that BAG has considerable genetic variability, which may be a source of very important genes in the study of genetic improvement of acerola, enabling proper planning of crosses to be performed, optimizing the genetic combinations higher in the statement of genotypes well adapted to regional environmental conditions.