The Guiana cacao genetic group (Theobroma cacao L.): a new core collection in French Guiana

Abstract

Since 1985, CIRAD has been involved in surveying, collecting, studying and conserving ex situ wild cacao trees of French Guiana. Around 225 accessions of this genetic material (open progenies and clones), derived from 18 demes (sub-populations), are currently conserved in a collection at the Perennial Plants Biological Resource Centre (CRB-PPG) in French Guiana, at CIRAD’s Paracou-Combi station, in Sinnamary. In 2004, an initial “core collection” of clones was founded on a virtually exhaustive representation of the different demes collected, with some phenotypically well-described clones. Following the genotyping of 181 of those clones by GBS (Genotyping by Sequencing), the availability of a large number of SNP markers (Single Nucleotide Polymorphism) enabled us to modernize the “core collection”. Thus, of the 181 wild cacao trees clones, genotyped by 1953 SNPs (without missing data), a new core collection was obtained using COREFINDER software, comprising 41 clones representing 100% of the variability encountered.