Determining of genetic diversity and genetic relationships among Lithuanian selections of Actinidia kolomikta

Abstract

The assessment of Lithuanian cultivars and clones of A. kolomikta DNA by RAPD method corroborated the significant genetic diversity and defined the level of their relationship. Genomic DNA was isolated from fresh leaves following CTAB method. Six decamer oligonucleotide primers Akt-1, Akt-2, Akt-3, 2B, OPA-02 and OPC-02 were used for PCR and a total of 42 scorable fragments were obtained. The genetic distances fall into interval 0.059-0.914. The lowest genetic distances were calculated for the clones F2 and F4, as well for the clones F2M2 and F3M3: 0.059 and 0.097, respectively. Clones specific markers for the cultivar 'Laiba' and clone F4M4 were identified with the primers OPC-02 and 2B. The dendrogram grouped the selections by UPGMA method and revealed two main clusters at the level of 0.500 genetic distance. The cultivar 'Laiba' could be characterized as the most genetically separate accession in the A. kolomikta germplasm collection of the Kaunas Botanical Garden of Vytautas Magnus University.