Molecular Phylogenetic Analysis of Olea europaea L. subsp. europaea Cultivars Grown in the Marmara Region, Turkey

DNA markers based on the PCR techniques are being broadly utilized during the past two decades. Randomly Amplified Polymorphic DNA (RAPD) is one of these techniques employed for determining the polymorphisms. In this study, we performed a molecular analysis using DNA markers for some olive (Olea europaea) cultivars grown in the Marmara Region of Turkey. Our goal was to determine the genetic relationships between 12 olive cultivars and ‘Delice’, the outgroup. Seven RAPD primers out of 60 (10 base-pair long) amplified gDNAs with repeatable bands. These primers generated 84 characters / bands in total and 39 out of these were polymorphic. After a Branch-and-Bound analysis and a Neighbour Joining (NJ) analysis via PAUP* software, the smallest genetic distance was found between Gordales and Karamursel Su cultivars as 0.03571 whereas the greatest distances were found between Arbequina and Ascolana, Manzanilla, Hermandos, Gemlik, Verdial and Vegral cultivars as 0.17857, respectively. Maximum parsimony (MP) analysis yielded 8 equally most parsimonious trees with 65 steps. Alternatively, NJ analysis produced one tree mostly congruent with MP tree number one. In conclusion, Turkish olive cultivars grown in the Marmara Region appear to be sister to the Spanish olive cultivars based on the RAPD data.