DEVELOPMENT OF PEACH SSRS AND THEIR USE IN FINGERPRINTING PEACH AND SWEET CHERRY CULTIVARS

Forty-one peach microsatellites were identified by screening a genomic DNA library from the Merrill O’Henry cultivar enriched for CT dinucleotide repeats. Primer pairs were designed in the microsatellite flanking regions and microsatellite polymorphism was evaluated in peach (Prunus persica (L.) Batsch) and sweet cherry (P. avium L.). All primer pairs gave PCR-amplification products on peach and 33 on sweet cherry (81 %). Six PCR-amplifications revealed several loci (15 %) in peach and eight (20 %) in sweet cherry. Among the 33 single-locus microsatellites in peach and sweet cheery, 13 revealed polymorphism both in peach and sweet cherry, 19 were polymorphic only on peach and one was polymorphic only on sweet cherry. The number of alleles per locus ranged from 1 to 9 (4.2 on average) for peach and from 1 to 6 (2.8 on average) for sweet cherry. The expected heterozygosity range from 0.07 to 0.79 (0.41 on average) for peach and from 0.39 to 0.76 (0.60 on average) for sweet cherry. The discrimination power ranged from 0.07 to 0.89 (0.54 on average) for peach and from 0.48 to 0.87 (0.72 on average) for sweet cherry. All the 27 peaches and the 21 sweet cherries analyzed were distinguished with only three SSRs. The most informative microsatellites will be used for fingerprinting peach and sweet cherry cultivars of the French National Collection. Those polymorphic both in peach and sweet cherry will be used in synteny analysis in Prunus.