Characterization of the Spanish Pomegranate Germplasm Collection Maintained at the Agricultural Experiment Station of Elche to Identify Promising Breeding Materials

Abstract

Pomegranates were one of the first domesticated fruit crops, and their long history resulted in the development of local cultivars all over the world. Spain is one of the main producers and exporters of this crop in the Mediterranean Basin, but in order to maintain the competitiveness of this crop, new varieties should be developed. For this purpose, the pomegranate germplasm collection hold at the Agricultural Experiment Station of Elche, a public institution dependent on the Valencian regional government, is an interesting tool. However, the detailed characterization of any germplasm collection is a fundamental requirement to be able to make the most of these resources, allowing to identify putative promising accessions and to optimize the design of the future crosses. In this work, the genetic diversity of 94 accessions of this collection was analyzed using 19 microsatellite markers. As a result, 85 different genotypes were identified. These genetic profiles could be useful for varietal identification. Despite this genetic diversity, no clear substructure was observed, except for the ornamental accessions, that could be related to the vegetative propagation of the species. Additionally, the morphological characterization of this collection has made it possible to identify some materials that may be of interest as a source of traits for breeding. Results presented here pave the way for further genetic analyses, allowing the selection of parents to obtain segregating populations, as well as their descendants by the use of molecular assisted selection.

Phenolic Compounds Profile from Algerian Pomegranate Fruit Extract (Punica Granatum L.) by UPLC-DAD-ESI-MS

“…Pomegranate (Punica granatum) is a temperate temperature species that is mostly grown in the Mediterranean region, Southern Asia, and various North and South American countries [1,2]. Several tropical and subtropical countries also cultivate it.…”

Influence of Pomegranate Appearance Attributes on Consumer Choice, and Identification of Barriers and Drivers for Consumption

“…Thus external characteristics are a decisive factor for deciding to purchase or not and, hence, the need to guide pomegranate breeders about not only consumers' taste preferences [15,16] but also about appearance preferences. Pomegranate breeding programmes have been established in the last few decades in pomegranate-growing countries such as China, Iran, India, Turkey, Israel, and Spain [17,18]. Knowing consumer preferences for fruit appearance is particularly relevant information for these programmes to obtain varieties with potential success in markets.…”

Assessing the Genetic Variability of Sweet Chestnut Varieties from the Tuscan Apennine Mountains (Italy)

“…Another interesting procedure is based on the application of molecular markers such as RAPDs, ISSRs, EST-SSRs, and AFLPs, which have been used in many pieces of research to detect the genetic diversity of different chestnut varieties and cultivars [3,[27][28][29][30][31]. Among them, the most used and reliable tool is focused on simple sequence repeats (SSRs), which are broadly adopted to also assess the genetic variability of many fruit species [32][33][34][35][36][37][38]. In this context, their application in C. sativa germplasm has already been developed, leading to the genetic characterization of several varieties in the whole of Europe [3,[39][40][41][42][43].…”