Origin identification of maritime pine stands in France using chloroplast simple-sequence repeats

“The original publication is available at/ A publicação original está disponível em: www.afs-journal.org”Maritime pine seed-lots from north-western Iberian regions (Portugal and Galicia) were introduced in the 1950s to the southwest of France (Aquitaine region), and the stands they formed suffered considerable frost damage. In the mid 1980s, a biochemical test was developed to test the putative origin of adult stands in Aquitaine, before seeds could be distributed for commercial purposes in France. In this paper, we describe a new test employing chloroplast simple-sequence repeats (cpSSRs) to facilitate identification of stand origin based on randomisation tests. The origin of five stands of unknown origin was determined with both the cpSSR and biochemical (terpene profile analysis) tests. The results from the two tests were concordant, but the DNA-based test gave faster and more accurate results. Use of this test should help when determining the origin of maritime pine stands in the Aquitaine region of France.Acknowledgements: L Fernandes was supported by a PRODEP III – Action 3.2 fellowship and the research was supported by ITQB research line ICL38. Special thanks are due to A. Aguiar for exchanging stimulating ideas and for his help in interpreting the data. This work could not have been done without the collaboration of M. Veloso from Estação Agronómica Nacional, who facilitated access to the sequencing unit. M.O. Krause is gratefully acknowledged for the final English revision