Genetic Relationships of Diploid Plums Based on RAPD Polymorphisms

Diploid plums such as Prunus salicina, P. simonii, P. cerasifera, P. americana, P. angustifolia, P. mexicana, and their hybrids have a high level of RAPD polymorphisms. Of 71 successfully used primers, there are 417 reproducible RAPD markers and only 55 (13%) markers are not polymorphic. Genetic relationships of these diploid plums based on RAPD data is estimated using genetic distance (GD) defined as GDij = 1 – Sij, where Sij is similarity coefficient. Two similarity coefficients, Jaccard's and simple matching coefficient, are compared. Simple matching always yields higher similarity coefficients. Genetic distance within and between each gene pool: California, southeastern U.S., foreign, is estimated. Genetic distances of these diploid plums ranged from 0.32 to 0.68, and agreed well with the natural geographic distribution of the species. The cluster analysis using unweighted pair-group methods using arithmetic averages (UPGMA) was used to construct phenograms to summarize the relationships among these cultivated diploid plums and plum species.