Characterization of grape cultivars from China using microsatellite markers

Abstract

A total of 32 different grape cultivars including representatives of local Chinese cultivars, some important and widely grown Chinese cultivars and international reference cultivars were genotyped at nine microsatellite loci in order to characterize their genetic diversities. The numbers of alleles detected per locus ranged from 9 to 18 with a total of 105 alleles and an average of 11.7 alleles per locus, while the number of microsatellite genotypes varied between 10 and 23, indicating that there are abundant allele diversities in Chinese grape cultivars. The expected heterozygosity varied between 0.740 and 0.915 and the polymorphism information content ranged from 0.716 to 0.908. According to the results of clustering and Principal Coordinates Analysis, three groups were identified among all these cultivars. The clusters of cultivars showed a clear separation of table grape, wine grape of Vitis vinifera and hybrids between European and American species. This study generated a microsatellite profile database for the cultivars from Chinese local and newly bred grapes.