Genetic Characterisation of Chestnut Cultivars in Crete

Abstract

(1) Background and objectives: Cretan chestnut belongs to sweet chestnut (Castanea sativa Mill.) and has been historically associated with the lifestyle of rural communities with great economic importance. However, chestnut genetic resources in Crete have rarely been studied and assessed, while chestnuts are threatened by several anthropogenic factors. This study assessed the genetic variability of the Cretan sweet chestnut using 59 trees corresponding to the four best-known chestnut cultivars (Strovliani, Rogdiani, Koutsakera and Katharokastania). (2) Materials and Methods: The trees were evaluated using seven simple sequence repeat markers (SSRs): three nSSRs and four EST-SSRs. (3) Results: Genomic SSR results revealed notable genetic diversity in terms of expected heterozygosity, level of polymorphism and effective number of alleles. Moreover, in the four chestnut cultivars, twenty-two unique genotypes were identified, deeming each cultivar to be in fact a multiclonal variety. Genetic differentiation among cultivars was relatively low, though highly significant. Four different groups of synonymies were found: two homonymy groups in Katharokastania and Strovliani, six in Rogdiani and eight in Koutsakera. The cluster analysis and PCoA results reveal two main clusters, one corresponding to the Rogdiani cultivar and the other to Katharokastania, while the other two could not be assigned to a particular group. (4) Conclusions: The null hypothesis of single-clone genotype-to-cultivar correspondence was tested and could not be accepted.