Abstract
Citrus is one of prominent horticultural crops that highly consumed by people around the world. Indonesia, as a country being located near the equator, has several local accessions of tangerine and mandarin citrus that remain poorly characterized. Thus, assessment of their genetic diversity will facilitate us in adequately identifying accessions conferring important traits suitable for breeding program. The objective of this study was to analyze the genetic diversity of Indonesia’s local accessions of tangerine and mandarin citrus using SSR and SCoT markers. Fifty three citrus genotypes representing 8 tangerine accessions, 28 mandarin accessions, and 17 outgroup accessions were subjected to genetic diversity analysis using 20 SSR and SCoT markers. The number of alleles detected by SCoT markers was higher than by SSR markers accounted for 137 and 107, respectively, while the number of alleles at each locus detected by ScoT and SSR markers varied from 6 to 12 and 2 to 10, respectively. Additionally, 19 SCoT and 18 SSR markers with PIC value greater than 0.5 were identified, indicating their potential as highly informative markers in citrus breeding programs. The phylogenetic tree and PCoA plot constructed from both SSR and SCoT markers revealed clearly discrimination of tangerine, mandarin, and outgroup accessions. The AMOVA results showed a higher genetic variation observed within populations in comparison to that among populations, indicating high cross-pollination in the citrus accessions used in the study. The population structure, represented by the highest delta K value of K = 2 in SSR markers and K = 3 in SCoT markers, also revealed evidence of genes flow occurred among citrus populations. The results of this study would beneficially provide an important information for citrus breeding strategies in the future.