Investigation of the Origin of Aronia mitschurinii using Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphism Analysis

Abstract

Aronia Medik., commonly known as chokeberry, is a genus of deciduous, multistemmed, rosaceous shrubs native to eastern North America. Three species of chokeberry are commonly accepted, A. arbutifolia (L.) Pers., red chokeberry, A. melanocarpa (Michx.) Elliott, black chokeberry, and A. prunifolia (Marshall) Rehder, or purple chokeberry. In Europe, a fourth species of human origin is recognized as Aronia mitschurinii A.K.Skvortsov & Maitul. In North America this type of Aronia is described as cultivars of A. melanocarpa, including ‘Viking’, ‘Nero’, and ‘Aron’. This species is characterized by near homogeneity of the population, tetraploidy, and a distinct morphology with more robust stems, wider leaf blades, and larger fruits than wild populations of A. melanocarpa. It has been proposed that this genotype originated from Russian pomologist Ivan Michurin’s early 20th century experiments involving Aronia × Sorbus hybridization. In this study we used amplified fragment length polymorphic (AFLP) markers to elucidate the relationships of A. mitschurinii to wild North American Aronia, ×Sorbaronia C.K. Schneid, Sorbus L., and six additional genera from subtribe Pyrinae (Rosaceae). Data from seven primer combinations were interpreted by the NTSYSpc software package into a similarity matrix using Jaccard’s coefficient. Clustering of AFLP similarity data using the unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean (UPGMA) identified A. mitschurinii as distinct from wild Aronia, grouping it close to ×Sorbaronia fallax C. K. Schneid. and ×Sorbaronia ‘Ivan’s Beauty’. Non-metric multidimensional scaling (nMDS) also demonstrated a relationship between A. mitschurinii, ×Sorbaronia fallax, a ×Sorbaronia × Aronia backcross and compound-leaved Sorbus.