Molecular Characterization of Sweet Cherry Genotypes and Rootstocks by using Prunus SSR Sequences

Sweet cherry nurseries graft rootstock onto Prunus avium, Prunus cerasus, Prunus mahaleb and hybrids of other Prunus species. In this study, we used eight Simple Sequence Repeat (SSR) primer pairs to describe the genetic variability of the commercial rootstocks CAB6P, MaxMa 60, MaxMa 14, PHL-C, SL 64 and an unknown rootstock widely used in the production of sweet cherries in Turkey and twelve sweet cherry genotypes. These SSR primers are widely used for molecular characterization of Prunus species. Amplification of SSR loci was obtained for all microsatellite primer pairs and the microsatellites generated multiple alleles (42 in total) in the cherry rootstocks. All tested loci were polymorphic, with four to seven (average = 5.3) alleles per locus. The allele size varied from 95 to 206 bp. UCDCH-17 and UCDCH-21 had the lowest number of alleles per locus (four), while PS12A02 had the most (seven). The observed mean heterozygosity value for different loci was 0.79, while the expected heterozygosity was 0.58.