Genetic relationships among cherry species with transferability of simple sequence repeat loci.

Sweet and sour cherries are two economically important species in the world. The capability to distinguish among cherry genotypes in breeding, cultivation and germplasm collection is extremely important for scientific as well as economic reasons. In the present research, sixteen simple sequences repeat (SSR) loci were used to estimate the relationships among sweet, sour, duke and wild cherries. All of the SSR markers showed high transferability across the studied species that allowed us to study genetic diversity in them. Totally 96 alleles were generated with SSR loci, of which 93 were found polymorphic with 97.57 % polymorphism. Values of genetic similarity between genotypes varied from 0.16 to 0.97 which indicated high level of genetic diversity. On the basis of their genetic similarities, SSR analysis allowed to group the genotypes into three main clusters according to their species. These results have an important implication for cherry germplasm characterization, improvement, and conservation.