Characterization of accessions of ‘Reine Claude Verte’ plum using Prunus SRR and phenotypic traits

Abstract

European plum (Prunus domestica L.) cv ‘Reine Claude Verte’ is highly appreciated for its excellent organoleptic qualities. Despite its increasing demand, this cultivar is in the process of being eradicated in many commercial orchards because of its generally erratic fruit setting. This situation led us to explore the behaviour of particular accessions with the aim of evaluating if some of them can crop more regularly. For this purpose, we initially evaluated the putative diversity of 24 European plum accessions of ‘Reine Claude Verte’ collected in different areas of Spain. For the molecular characterization, 16 Prunus SSRs were used. Eight of them were selected from previous works of SSRs transferability within the genus and the other eight were selected from a transferability screening of another 75 Prunus SSRs, in which 65 SSRs were conserved in the species. Morphological characterization was performed by evaluating 33 qualitative characters of leaves and fruits. Results allowed differentiating the accessions by their genotypic profile and their phenotype. The accessions were grouped in six genotypic profiles according to their genetic similarity and in seven clusters according to their fruit and leaf traits. High similarity was found between the ‘Reine Claude Verte’ commercial cultivars. Some of the prospected accessions sharing the same genotypic profile showed some morphological differences, whereas some accessions with different genotypic profiles presented fruit traits similar to ‘Reine Claude Verte’. The combined use of molecular and morphological characterization allowed identifying different clones of the cultivar that were selected for further agronomic evaluation.