Marker-assisted cultivar breeding in pistachio

Abstract

Pistachio production in Turkey has been increasing year by year. However, the main cultivars such as ‘Uzun’ and ‘Kırmızı’ have strong tendency to alternate bearing with small size nuts and low splitting rates. Therefore, we aimed to develop new pistachio cultivars that have low tendency to alternate bearing, large nuts with high splitting percentages. Pistachio has a dioecious character and a very long juvenility period that limits its breeding. Recently, novel sex-linked markers were demonstrated to distinguish sex in pistachio at seedling stage in pistachio. Therefore, we aimed to use those markers for marker-assisted breeding (MAB) in pistachio in the new cultivar breeding program. A total of about 15,000 F1 progenies were obtained from 45 combinations together with about 500 backcrosses and about 500 pseudo F2 progenies). About 7,500 male progenies were discarded by marker assisted selection. The breeding orchard was established with female progenies together with adequate number of pollinators in December, 2017. MAB provided almost two times more female progenies in the breeding orchard that will serve more chance to breed new female pistachio cultivars along with keeping the land and resources for 20-25 years.