Location: Sustainable Perennial Crops Laboratory
Project Number: 8042-21000-303-019-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Jun 1, 2025
End Date: May 31, 2029
Objective:
This collaboration will assist CATIE to improve the genetic integrity, analyze the genetic diversity, to enhance the use of the coffee germplasm, which are housed in CATIE’s living germplasm collections. This project will contribute to more efficient management of coffee germplasms, sharing of accurate information among users, better use of germplasm for varietal development, such as new sources of resistance and tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses and quality attributes. The result of molecular characterization and germplasm evaluation of the CATIE coffee collection will be utilized by other USDA ARS units to develop an ARS coffee collection through the strategic acquisition of specific genetically diverse coffee accessions from the CATIE collection.
Approach:
Validating genotype identities of CATIE coffee accessions.
Leaves of the coffee accessions in the CATIE living germplasm bank will be sampled following the guidelines established by ARS SPCL and used for DNA extraction. The samples will be sent to USDA/ARS, Beltsville Agricultural Research Center (BARC)/Sustainable Perennial Crops Laboratory (SPCL) or a designated third party for DNA extraction. The DNA samples genotyped using Single-Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) markers. Off-types will be identified based on DNA profiles and parentage analysis will confirm pedigree relationships. Standard SNP profiles will be established for each accession. These standardized SNP profiles will establish a SNP-based genotype verification procedure for CATIE to improve and monitor the accuracy of varietal dissemination.