GENETIC DIVERSITY ANALYSIS AMONG SEVERAL APPLE GENOTYPES USING ISSR MARKERS

Apple (Malus domestica Borkh.) is one of the most cultivated fruit trees species worldwide, its fruits being consumed not only for their organoleptic attributes, but also for their nutraceutical properties. Therefore, the genetic variability of the species is extremely important to insure a large enough pool of cultivars to accommodate consumer demands for various fruit traits, such as taste, flavor, color, shape, etc., as well as to preserve cultivars that have less desirable organoleptic properties but are resistant/tolerant to biotic and/or abiotic stress and could be good genitors for these traits. The current study presents the use of ISSR method to assess the genetic variability among seven Romanian apple cultivars from the orchard collection of University of Agronomic Sciences and Veterinary Medicine of Bucharest, Romania: ‘Florina’, ‘Remar’, ‘Ciprian’, ‘Iris’, ‘Rebra’, ‘Generos’, and ‘Redix’. In addition, the method proved to be useful in identifying closely related individual genotypes, allowing the identification and elimination of duplicates from collections, without compromising the collection’s genetic variability.