Assessment of genetic diversity of raspberry cultivars using RAPD markers

Purpose. To evaluate the efficiency of RAPD markers for assessing genetic polymorphism of 12 raspberry varieties cultivated in Ukraine. Methods. Young raspberry leaves were used for DNA extraction. DNA was extracted using CTAB buffer. In order to select informative RAPD-PCR markers for raspberry genome analysis, we tested 28 primers. Results. High informativeness of RAPD-PCR method for genetic identification of raspberry cultivars was confirmed by using 7 RAPD primers. The studied raspberry cultivars had a high level of genetic variability by RAPD-PCR markers: the average number of alleles per locus (Na) was 1.895, the average value of the effective number of alleles per locus (Ne) was 1.434, the average value of the Shannon heterogeneity index was 0.419, the average value of the expected heterozygosity was 0.270. The average values of genetic distances and genetic similarity index between raspberry cultivars were 0.488 and 0.696, respectively. Conclusions. The studied RAPD markers can be useful not only for characterizing the genetic structure, distinguishing raspberry cultivars and selecting their most promising variants for crossing, but also for solving legal issues such as assessing violations of breeders' rights.