Abstract

Ananas comosus var. erectifolius (L. B. Sm.) Coppens & F. Leal, populary known as curauá, is a bromeliaceae, found in the Amazonian flora. It is of great commercial interest, mostly for the automobile industry. Despite the curauá’s potential, little has been done to conserve its germplasm. For this, it’s necessary to know its genetic variability. An efficient way of knowing it is to use molecular markers because they are polymorphic and not influenced by the environment. Thus, this work is aimed to evaluate the genetic diversity in curauá’s access of different germplasm banks and its natural populations, using simple sequence repeat (SSR) and random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) molecular markers. The similarity between the cultivars was calculated based on the Dice coefficient. From the similarity analysis, the cultivars grouping dendrogram was constructed using the unweighted pair group mean average method (UPGMA). High genetic similarity was observed between the individuals of each group and most of the variability found was between the groups. The low variability found within the groups is due to the way in which A. comosus var. erectifolius has been multiplied, through asexual reproduction in plantation areas. The data suggest that the conservation strategies of this species should focus on the largest possible number of collections in different geographic regions to increase the variability of the banks.

Key words: Ananas comosus var. erectifolius, conservation