SSR marker based DNA fingerprinting of Tunisian olive (Olea europaea L.) varieties

This study aimed to test the efficiency of SSR markers to identify and to differentiate a set of 26 Tunisian olive varieties maintained at four collections. SSR analysis from 10 primer pairs revealed a total of 86 polymorphic alleles with 4 to 14 alleles per locus that allowed unique genotyping of the examined varieties. The Polymorphism Information Content (PIC) values ranged from 0.548 to 0.796 (average 0.719). The efficiency was found very high with average discriminating power overall 10 loci higher than 0.9. A combination of three SSR markers (ssrOeUA-DCA9, ssrOeUA-DCA13 and ssrOeUA-DCA16) was proposed for rapid identification of analysed cultivars. Three cultivars (Gerboui, Ain Jarbouaa and Regregui) thought to be identical resulted in absolutely different SSR profiles. This research showed that SSR is a suitable and effective tool to characterise olive varieties in Tunisian germplasm collections. The outcome of this study could be useful for varietal survey and the construction of a database of all olive varieties in Tunisia.