Genetic fingerprinting for all 2,300 apples and more than 250 pears in the National Fruit Collection will be carried out by East Malling Research (EMR) after it was awarded a three-year contract from Defra.
DNA markers will be used to produce individual profiles for each tree, according to EMR, and this will help curators verify the uniqueness of the material and assist in the identification of trees previously unnamed after traditional comparisons.
It is hoped the initiative will help streamline the collection by eliminating duplicates and detecting incorrectly named accessions, as well as help to reduce costs and allow duplicated plants to be replaced by other accessions.
EMR has already fingerprinted the first half of the 545 pears and 200 cherries in the National Fruit Collection.
The collection is being verified using a set of reference microsatellite markers approved in collaboration with other international groups, according to EMR. This means the UK’s national collection will be directly comparable with those from other countries, it added.
Emma-Jane Allen, scientific curator of the collections at Imperial College, said: “Genetic fingerprinting of the apple and pears will allow a substantial increase in the efficiency of curating these collections. We also hope that the fingerprints will reveal information about the relationships between apple and pear varieties conserved in the National Fruit Collection.”
No comments yet