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Large-Scale Screening and Identification of S-RNase Alleles in Chinese and European Apricot Accessions Reveal Their Diversity and Geographic Distribution Patterns

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: Apricot (Prunus armeniaca L.) exhibits a gametophytic self-incompatibility (GSI) system. To identify the S-genotypes of the mainly apricot cultivars including 133 native Chinese cultivars and 35 foreign accessions, PCR was performed by using five primers combination based on the conserved regions of Prunus S-RNase genes. After cloning and sequencing the PCR products, the S-genotypes of all 168 apricot cultivars were determined. Total 46 different S-RNase alleles, with 15 new alleles were identified. For all the 168 accessions, the top five most frequent S-alleles were S8, S11, S9, S16 and S53. S11, S8 and S16showed the most frequency in Chinese cultivars and S9, S8 and S2 have presented mostly in European accessions. For Chinese apricot cultivars, the distribution of S-alleles among five geographic regions were also investigated. In the Northwest China area, S16 was the most frequent S-allele. In Xinjiang region, S66, S49 and S14 ranked the top three. In the North China area, S8, S11 and S53 were the top three most frequent S-alleles. In addition, the self-compatible type SC was not detected in these 133 Chinese accessions. Finally the phylogenetic tree of apricot S-alleles indicated that there are four groups of S-RNase genes (S97/ S106, S14 / S14a/ S66, S9/ S17/ S44, and S23/ S53) presenting high closely relation. These results provided more data on the S-genotypes of apricot accessions, which would contribute to the future breeding programs by selecting the appropriate parents and for efficient orchard design by planting a combination of cultivars and suitable pollinizers.

Source: International Journal of Molecular Sciences

DOI: 10.3390/ijms26178667