AOBPreview originally published online on September 8, 2004
Annals of Botany 2004 94(5):699-705; doi:10.1093/aob/mch194
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Annals of Botany 94/5, © Annals of Botany Company 2004; all rights reserved
High Levels of Genetic Diversity Throughout the Range of the Portuguese Wheat Landrace ‘Barbela’
1 Department of Biology, University of Leicester, Leicester LE1 7RH, UK, 2 Centre of Genetics and Biotechnology—University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro, 5000-911 Vila Real, Portugal and 3 John Innes Centre, Colney Lane, Norwich NR4 7UH, UK
* For correspondence. E-mail ccarvalh{at}utad.pt
Received: 2 February 2004 Returned for revision: 7 June 2004 Accepted: 19 July 2004 Published electronically: 8 September 2004
• Background and Aims Landrace populations represent an important intra-crop reservoir of biodiversity and source of novel gene alleles for use in breeding programmes. Here the aim was to measure the diversity of a wheat landrace, ‘Barbela’, from the north of Portugal.
• Methods DNA was extracted from 59 accessions of Barbela collected across its geographical range. Diversity was measured by microsatellite length polymorphisms using 27 primer pairs amplifying 34 polymorphic microsatellite loci.
• Key Results High levels of polymorphism were found, with an average polymorphism information content of 0·52; an average of 4·77 alleles (range 2–11) were present at each locus, and half of these loci showed an additional allele in the reference variety ‘Chinese Spring’.
• Conclusions ‘Barbela’ is maintained from seeds collected by farmers, but it maintains high allelic variation, and no groupings of accessions were detected when analysed by geographical region, farm or climate, indicating that the wheat landrace is a homogeneous entity. The diversity within the farmer-maintained landrace demonstrates the importance of characterization and maintenance of landrace collections before valuable genetic combinations are lost as uniform commercial crops are introduced.
Key words: Biodiversity, wheat, landrace, microsatellites, plant breeding
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