Genetic diversity in peach (Prunus persica L batch) revealed by randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) markers and compared to inbreeding coefficients

Previous studies of peach germplasm using pedigree information and isozyme polymorphism data have shown limited diversity in the U.S. gene pool. To further investigate the genetic diversity among peach cultivars grown in different regions of the United States, 94 RAPD markers were used to estimate the genetic distances among 136 cultivars. Of the 12 clusters formed in a dendrogram, the 90 U.S. cultivars and breeding lines and most of those from Europe and Latin America grouped to only three clusters, while the 23 peach entries from India, Pakistan, Russia, Okinawa, and China, as well as the almond cultivar used as an outgroup, were distributed among the other nine clusters. Therefore, the genetic diversity within temperature U.S. peach germplasm is quite limited, and to expand the variability, additional germplasm should be obtained, especially from Asia. Comparison of genetic similarity based on inbreeding coefficients with similarity coefficients based on the RAPD data produced a correlation of 0.395, which is comparable to values in similar investigations in other crops. Thus, similar conclusions can be drawn from these two sources of information. RAPD data are useful particularly when pedigree information is incomplete, there has been substantial selection within breeding populations, and a high proportion of alleles are identical in state but not by descent.