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ARS Home » Northeast Area » Washington, D.C. » National Arboretum » Floral and Nursery Plants Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #237928

Title: Evaluation of flowering cherry (Prunus L.) species, hybrids, and cultivars using SSR markers

Author
item MA, HONGMEI - University Of Maryland
item Kramer, Matthew
item Olsen, Richard
item Pooler, Margaret

Submitted to: Journal of the American Society for Horticultural Science
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 6/18/2009
Publication Date: 12/23/2009
Citation: Ma, H., Olsen, R., Pooler, M, Kramer, Matthew. 2009. Evaluation of Flowering Cherry Species, Hybrids, and Cultivars Using Simple Sequence Repeat Markers. Journal of the American Society for Horticultural Science. 134:435-444.

Interpretive Summary: Ornamental flowering cherry trees are popular landscape plants that are used in residential and commercial landscapes throughout most temperate regions of the world. Most of the flowering cherry trees planted in the U.S. represent relatively few species. The U.S. National Arboretum has an ongoing breeding program aimed at broadening this base by developing new cultivars of ornamental cherry with disease and pest resistance, tolerance to environmental stresses, and superior ornamental characteristics. Knowledge of the genetic relationships among species would be useful in breeding and germplasm conservation efforts. However, the taxonomy of flowering cherry species and cultivars is complicated by differences in ploidy levels and intercrossing among species. We have used Simple Sequence Repeat (SSR) markers developed for other related species to screen a diverse collection of over 100 ornamental cherry genotypes in order to determine the genetic relationships among species, cultivars, and accessions. High levels of polymorphism were exhibited among the materials studied, thus indicating that ornamental flowering cherry germplasm has substantial inherent genetic diversity. This information, combined with traditional morphological characteristics, will be useful in determining genetic relationships among accessions in our collection and for predicting crossability of taxa.

Technical Abstract: Flowering cherries belong to the genus Prunus L., consisting primarily of species native to Asia. Despite the popularity of ornamental cherry trees in the landscape, most ornamental Prunus planted in the U.S. are derived from a limited genetic base of Japanese flowering cherry taxa. A diverse collection of ornamental Prunus germplasm is maintained at the U.S. National Arboretum as part of an ongoing flowering cherry improvement program, but the genetic backgrounds of many trees are unclear. We characterized this germplasm using 5 SSR primer pairs, including one chloroplast primer pair. These primers generated 140 unique alleles which were used to assess genetic relationships among species, hybrids, and cultivars in this collection. We found that these markers followed expected Mendelian inheritance from parents to progeny in controlled hybridizations. In general, species clustered according to published taxonomic groupings, including a distinct separation of the ornamental cherries (Prunus subgenus Cerasus Pers., section Cerasus) from other subgenera or sections. Individual accessions of several taxa did not cluster with other samples of the species, indicating possible misidentification or interspecific combinations. The resulting information will be useful in guiding decisions on breeding methodology and germplasm preservation.