Abstract

Oblica is the predominant olive cultivar in Croatia, spread widely in all the olive growing regions. Morphological variability within the cultivar is well documented but often it has been attributed to environmental factors rather than to genetic ones. In order to investigate intracultivar variability on the molecular level, olive samples from 4 growing regions in Croatia (South Dalmatia, Middle Dalmatia, Kvarner islands and Iner Dalmatia) were screened for amplified fragment length polymorphisms (AFLP). DNA was extracted from leaf tissue and 9 AFLP primer combinations were used. Genetic distances between individual trees were calculated using Dice similarity coefficient and the dendrogram based on UPGMA cluster analysis was constructed. Preliminary results of AFLP analysis indicate that the cultivar Oblica can be regarded as mixture of clonal variants.

Key words: Olive, amplified fragment length polymorphism, polymorphism.

Abbreviation

RAPDs, Random amplified polymorphic DNA; AFLPs, amplified fragment length polymorphism; ISSRs, inter simple sequence repeats; SSRs, simple sequence repeats; SNPs, single nucleotide polymorphism; SCARs, sequence characterized amplified regions; CTAB, cetyltrimethyl ammonium bromide; PCR, polymerase chain reaction.