Novel breeding strategies for ornamental dahlias II
Molecular analyses of genetic distances between Dahlia cultivars and wild species
- authored by
- Hilke Wegner, Thomas Debener
- Abstract
Genetic distances between nineteen Dahlia cultivars and three genotypes of wild Dahlia species and a hybrid were analysed with 1432 AFLP-Markers generated by 10 Hind/Mse primer combinations. Markers were transformed into a 0/1-matrix and relative distances were computed by means of the Jaccard-coefficient. From these data a dendrogram was constructed by the UPGMA-method. In the dendrogram the cultivars cluster together into one group, while the wild species and the hybrid branched off at a larger genetic distance. The level of genetic similarity of the cultivars averaged between 0.68 and 0.77. Only two varieties displayed a similarity of 0.92 to each other. This relatively large genetic distance between the cultivars indicates a vast potential for further variety development. Within the cultivars different clusters are formed which do not show any relation to phenotypic characteristics like inflorescence morphology or breeding origin. This lack of correlation indicates that a classification of dahlias into horticultural groups does not reflect genetic relationships between cultivars. Therefore, this classification should not be used to select parents for further breeding apart for the few characters it is built on. With knowledge about the genetic background additional information for the selection of genotypes as parent in breeding is available. Genotypes can be choosen for their low level of relatedness or for their genetically characteristics independent from the horticultural type.
- Organisation(s)
-
Institute of Plant Genetics
Section Molecular Plant Breeding
- External Organisation(s)
-
Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK)
- Type
- Article
- Journal
- European Journal of Horticultural Science
- Volume
- 73
- Pages
- 97-103
- No. of pages
- 7
- ISSN
- 1611-4434
- Publication date
- 06.2008
- Publication status
- Published
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Horticulture
