Distinctness of cacao cultivars using yield component data and RAPD markers

Abstract

The identification of cacao cultivars is crucial now that new cacao clones are available to producers. We compared the efficiency of the RAPD markers in relation to yield components for the discrimination of five cultivars (‘Maranhão’, ‘Pará’, ‘Parazinho’, the open-pollinated ‘ICS 1’, and the commercial hybrid mixture). Three yield components evaluated over 10 years and 182 polymorphic bands were scored for genetic distances and multidimensional scaling analyses. We found a close relationship between the genetic distance (GD) of RAPD data and Mahalanobis distance (MD) of yield component data, and between the biplots of GD and MD, although only RAPD markers were able to distinguish the five cultivars from each other. Biplots were able to discriminate cultivars with different improvement levels. Thirty-one primers were needed for an exclusive identification of each cultivar. In future identifications of cacao clones these primers will allow the construction of clone specific-SCAR primers of high reproducibility.