Use of microsatellite markers to assess the identity and genetic diversity of Vitis labrusca and Vitis rotundifolia cultivars

Abstract

Ten grapevine cultivars were genotyped at eight microsatellite loci to characterize their identity and genetic diversity. Of these, nine cultivar profiles matched with those of databases and ‘Magoon’ matched with ‘Regale’ in the present study and ‘Regale’ in the University of California (Davis) database, implicating a likely error in planting. The number of alleles ranged from 5 (VVM5) to 9 (VVMD31), and the observed heterozygosity ranged from 37.14 (VVMD5) to 97.14% (VVMD27), with no significant differences in relation to the expected values for any of the loci, with the exception of VVMD5. The polymorphism information content values were observed to be above 0.25 in more than 85% of the loci analyzed, and VVMD31 was the most informative. The UPGMA analysis clustered the cultivars into two distinct groups. Within each group, the most divergent cultivars were ‘Bountiful’ (V. rotundifolia) and ‘Goethe’ (V. labrusca), also exhibiting the largest number of private alleles, 4 and 7, respectively. When comparing the two groups, the most divergent accessions were ‘Bountiful’ and ‘Bordo’, with the highest Nei distance. It was demonstrated that there is sufficient genetic variability in the cultivars used in this study to support breeding programs.