Journal of Applied Botany and Food Quality, cilt.85, sa.2, ss.224-228, 2012 (SCI-Expanded)
25 autochthonous grapevine cultivars from Northeast Anatolia in Turkey together with two well-known standard cultivars, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot were fingerprinted using six pairs of SSR primers to assess their genetic diversity and relatedness. All six SSR primers produced successful amplifications and revealed DNA polymorphisms that were subsequently used to assess genetic relatedness of the cultivars. A total of 52 alleles were detected with a mean value of 8.67 alleles per locus indicating allele richness. The average expected heterozygosity (He) and observed heterozygosity (Ho) were 0.759 and 0.809, respectively. Considering the number of alleles generated, the highest number was observed in VVS2 loci (14 alleles/locus), while the lowest in VrZAG83 loci (5 alleles/ locus). The Unweighted Pair-Group Method with Arithmetic mean (UPGMA) dendrogram constructed based on the SSR data yielded two main clusters. First cluster included only cv. Kibris and the second cluster included rest of the cultivars including Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. The results showed that SSR markers have proved to be an efficient tool for fingerprinting grapevine cultivars and conducting genetic diversity studies in grapevine.