Authors: Digner Ortega Cedillo
, Carlos Felipe Barrera,, Eduardo Morillo Velastegui
, Leonardo
Quintero Roman
, Jorge Daniel Ortega
, Jorge Orellana Carrera
, Victor Cevallos
, Caio Cesio
Salgado
, Pedro Crescencio Souza Carneiro
, Cosme Damiao Cruz
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Abstract: The species E. oleifera is a promising genetic resource for oil palm breeding programs. The main
purpose of this study was to quantify the genetic diversity within and between accessions
collected in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Nine microsatellite markers were genotyped in 40 plants
from the E. oleifera germplasm bank of INIAP in Ecuador. The number of alleles varied from
two to five, with a total of 26 alleles and a mean number of 2.89. The polymorphism information
content was 0.35, indicating that all markers were informative and enough to access the
variability within and between E. oleifera plants. The average inbreeding coefficient was -0.03,
the mean expected heterozygosity 0.41, the average observed heterozygosity 0.42 and seven of
the nine markers were in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium (HWE). This result shows that the
analyzed population was close to the assumed HWE, showing high variability between plants
and no inbreeding or sampling effect. The 40 plants were clustered in seven groups differentiated
by the Tocher method. Seedlings derived from a same accession were grouped separately,
indicating variability within the sampled accessions. This variability was illustrated by grouping
the 40 plants by the UPGMA method and confirmed by the molecular variance analysis
(AMOVA). Of the total variation, 72% was detected among plants within the sampled
accessions. These results have implications for breeding purposes and the collection of new E.
oleifera germplasm. |