THE ESPLORA PROJECT: PRELIMINARY STRAWBERRY RESULTS

The cultivated strawberry Fragaria × ananassa is the most economically important soft fruit species and, hence, numerous breeding programs earmarked for superior commercial cultivars aimed at specific requirements of regional markets have been established virtually in every corner of the world where strawberries are grown as a cash crop. As part of the ESPLORA project financed by Italy’s Agriculture Ministry, CRA-FRF is building a map of the cultivated octoploid F. × ananassa using a population of 66 individuals from the cross of ‘Alba’ × F. chiloensis clone (characterized by white fruit). To the nearly 180 primer pairs developed in the genus Fragaria (vesca, chiloensis, ananassa species) that were used in parental screens, we added a “tgtaaaacgacggccagt” motif to each oligonucleotide in a primer pair to reduce PCR amplification costs (‘PIGtailing’). Another 86 primer pairs distributed in all LG were also used. Each primer was fluorescently labelled with FAM, VIC, NED and PET and genotype detection subsequently performed.