ISSN 2756-388X
International Journal of Plant and Animal Sciences ISSN: 2167-0437 Vol. 3(1), pp. 105-111, February, 2014. © International Scholars Journals
Full Length Research
Genetic diversity of outstanding Cacao accessions (Theobroma cacao L.) from farmers’ field in Côte-d’Ivoire using SSR markers
Pokou N.D1, Motamayor J.C2, Schnell R2 and Eskes A. B3
1Centre National de Recherche Agronomique (CNRA) 01 BP 1740 Abidjan 01, Côte-d’Ivoire.
2MARS-IncC/o United States Department of Agriculture /Agricultural Research Service(USDA-ARS).13601 Old Cutler Road, Miami, Florida, USA.
3Bioversity International/CIRAD, C/O Bioversity International, ParcScientifiqueAgropolis II,34397 Montpellier Cedex 5, France.
E-mail: [email protected]
Accepted 14, November 2014
Abstract
Cocoa tree (Theobroma cacao L.) is an important commodity of Côte-d’Ivoire which lead the world for cocoa export. In six producing regions of the country (Abengourou, Aboisso, Divo, Gagnoa, Daloa), 489 best trees have been selected by a breeder-farmer participatory manner based on the knowledge of farmers about their planting material. Seedlings from each of these selected trees were used to study the genetic diversity and the genetic structure using 12 microsatellites markers. Parental clones from seed gardens were used as control populations. The microsatellites markers amplified 143 alleles in farmers’ accessions and 78 alleles in control populations. The farm accessions revealed high within region and low between region diversity. Most of the farm accessions appeared to belong to hybrids intermediate between Upper Amazon (UA) and Lower Amazon (LA) Amelonado parental genotypes. However, certain of accessions appeared to be rather pure UA or LA types. An important finding of this study is the allelic richness which is higher in farmers’ accession than seed gardens parental clones suggesting the possibility of enlarging the breeder’s collection by introducing farm accessions into working collection.
Key words: Theobroma cacao, farmer accession, microsatellites markers, diversity.