Chloroplast DNA variations in Mediterranean olive

Over ten years, several European teams have characterised polymorphism in the olive chloroplast genome (cpDNA). A particularly low level of cpDNA polymorphism was detected; but, in a recent study based on 14 Mediterranean trees, an intergenic (trnD-trnT) spacer was reported to be sufficiently variable to distinguish at least six haplotypes in cultivated olive. Compared to previous studies, the level of polymorphism described (nine substitutions and seven short indels on a segment of approx. 1 kbp) was particularly high. In order to enlarge upon the sample analysed, new trnD-trnT sequences were generated from 18 olive trees originating from the Mediterranean Basin, Macaronesia, S