MOLECULAR RESEARCH ON THE GENETIC DIVERSITY OF CACTUS (OPUNTIA SPP) USING THE SSR METHOD

In spite of the large adaptability to different climatic and environmental conditions cactus species (Opuntia spp) keep a sporadic sight in agriculture systems so that their genetic resources are subjected to genetic erosion. In order to characterize these genetic resources, we employed 10 SSR primers to study 62 Opuntia accessions from the collection of Oristano in Italy. As a result, all tested primers generated a large number of polymorphic markers. The mean value of the polymorphic index content (PIC), P%: percentage of polymorphism, no: observed number of alleles per locus, ne: effective number of alleles per locus; Is: Shannon’s information index and H: Nei’s gene diversity, for the SSR loci provided good discriminating ability for the assessment of genetic diversity in the genotypes included in this study.