GENETIC IDENTITY OF RASPBERRY ‘POLANA’ PLANTLINGS EXAMINED USING MICROSATELLITE MARKERS

Abstract

Raspberry cultivars are clonally propagated and therefore all plants belonging to a single cultivar represent the same genotype. Cultivar integrity of raspberry plantlings placed on the market in Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H) is based on examining of morphological traits, which is not a reliable tool for genetic identification. In this study plantlings declared as cultivar ‘Polana’ were genotyped using seven microsatellites, in order to gain preliminary insight into the genetic integrity of raspberry plantlings marketed in B&H. Plant tissue (leaves) from 10 raspberry plants were randomly sampled from a batch of plantlings sold by major fruit nursery in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Along with these samples, four reference cultivars with confirmed identity (‘Polka’, ‘Autumn Bliss’, ‘Heritage’ and ‘Polana’) were also included in the study. Seven primer pairs amplified 31 alleles, or on average 4.4 alleles per locus. UPGMA cluster analysis, based on the Jaccard similarity coefficient, revealed that among the ten samples declared as ‘Polana’ plantlings only five were genetically identical to any of the other samples. The cluster analyses also exposed that none of the ten samples declared as ‘Polana’ seedlings were in fact identical or even closely related to the ‘Polana’ reference cultivar or any of the other reference cultivars. These findings clearly show that the genetic identity of primocane raspberry plantlings , currently sold in Bosnia and Herzegovina, needs to be tested using objective and reliable methods rather than simple morphologic observation.