Varietal Descriptors for the Distinction of Underutilized Varieties of Sechium edule (Jacq) Swartz

• Published in: Plants (Basel) Vol. 11; no. 23; p. 3309
• Main Authors: Cadena-Iñiguez, Jorge, Avendaño-Arrazate, Carlos Hugo, Arévalo-Galarza, Ma de Lourdes, Cisneros-Solano, Víctor Manuel, Ruiz-Posadas, Lucero Del Mar, Aguirre-Medina, Juan Francisco, Watanabe, Kazuo, Machida-Hirano, Ryoko, Barrera-Guzmán, Luís Angel
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 30-11-2022; MDPI
• Subjects: Amplified fragment length polymorphism; amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP); fruit characteristics; GenBank; Gene polymorphism; Genetic distance; Genetic diversity; Genomes; Germplasm; Indigenous species; molecular markers; Morphology; Multivariate analysis; Physical characteristics; plant variability; Polymorphism; Qualitative analysis; Sechium edule; Variables; Mexico; plant variability; fruit characteristics; GenBank; molecular markers; amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP)
• ISSN: 2223-7747; 2223-7747
• DOI: 10.3390/plants11233309

(Jacq.) Sw. (Cucurbitaceae) is a species native to Mexico and Central America. The collection, characterization, and evaluation of accessions maintained in genebanks is essential for the conservation of this species. However, there are no specific varietal descriptors that differ from those used in a phenetic approach and are adapted to international registration guidelines to help distinguish, improve, cluster, and protect intraspecific variants of common use and those obtained by breeding. Therefore, 65 morphological descriptors (qualitative and quantitative) were evaluated in 133 accessions obtained from Mexico, Guatemala, and Costa Rica located in the National Germplasm Bank of
in Mexico. These characteristics were observed to be phenetically stable for five generations under the same agroclimatic conditions. In addition, an analysis of amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) was applied to 133 samples from a set of 245 accessions. According to the multivariate analysis, 26 of the 65 descriptors evaluated (qualitative and quantitative) enabled differentiation of varieties of
. The AFLP analysis showed a high level of polymorphism and genetic distance between cultivated accessions and their corresponding wild ancestor. The variations in
suggest that the morphological characteristics have differentiated from an essentially derived initial edible variety (ancestral original variety), but unlike other cucurbits, there is no evidence of the ancestral edible for
since the seed is unorthodox and there are no relicts.