Molecular Characterisation of the Apricot (Prunus armeniaca L.) Germplasm Regarding the Breeding Aims

The successful apricot production in Europe is often limited by adaptability orfertilization problems. Significant losses are caused by virus infection. There is clearmarket demand to spread the ripening season with new transportable and attractivelycoloured cultivars. To solve these tasks breeders need more information describing theapricot gene pool. Traditional methods based on pomological and phenotypicdescriptions do not provide sufficient information to trace the expansion of apricot fromthe centres of origin; to expose the major genetic events in the evolution of cultivars orto identify and characterize genotypes during the breeding process. In this context,molecular markers have proved to be a powerful tool for solving the above problems.The least amounts of common alleles are shared between the Chinese and MiddleEuropean cultivars, indicating that these groups are distantly related. The germplasm ofthe present European cultivars is rather in Middle-Asia, Iran and Turkey. Genotypesfrom these regions could play crucial role in the European apricot breeding programs.