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Extent of the genetic diversity in Lebanese olive (Olea europaea L.) trees: a mixture of an ancient germplasm with recently introduced varieties

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Abstract

The olive tree was primary domesticated in the North-East Levant at least six millennia ago. Nowadays monumental trees are surviving across the Mediterranean Basin. These ancient, traditional varieties testify for the long cultivation of the crop but this germplasm remains incompletely characterized. Here, we investigated the genetic diversity among Lebanese cultivated olives in comparison to accessions from the whole Mediterranean Basin. Seventy-three olive trees including six monumentals were sampled in four main Lebanese areas, and characterized with 12 nuclear microsatellites and 39 plastid DNA markers. These genetic profiles were combined to those previously obtained in the world collection of Marrakech (WOGB) and analyzed with a phenetic approach, a multivariate analysis, and a Bayesian clustering method. Three main genetic clusters were identified in the Mediterranean cultivated olive tree as previously shown. The majority of Lebanese olive trees were assigned to the Eastern Mediterranean gene pool. A few genotypes were however assigned to the Central Mediterranean cluster. Plastid DNA markers revealed the presence of four haplotypes belonging to lineages E1 (72 olive trees) and E2 (one plant). Haplotype E1.1 that originated in the Eastern Mediterranean was found in 68 individuals (93 %). Within the common variety “Baladi”, several nuclear microsatellite profiles were identified including closely related olive trees that may correspond to molecular variants due to somatic variation. The six monumentals were remarkably positioned close to the Cypriot accessions and showed three different profiles, one of which matched to the most common profile of the widespread traditional variety “Baladi”. Our findings suggest that the Lebanese olive trees were locally selected during the beginning stages of olive growing and served as basic plant material for the current traditional varieties derived by both sexual and clonal propagation. Recent variety introductions from westernmost regions were also evidenced, but only in modern orchards from the Bekaa district.

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Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to the colleagues from the Lebanese Agricultural Research Institute (LARI) for providing samples: B. Hamadeh, A. Chehade, A. El Bitar, H. Youssef, R. Nabbout, M. Smaha and A.K. Haj. All molecular genotyping was performed in the “Atelier de Marquage Moléculaire” UMR AGAP laboratory. The authors would like to thank all members of the laboratory for their technical support, and particularly Ch. Tollon for her contribution in microsatellite genotyping. This study was supported by Agropolis Fondation FruitMed No. 0901-007 and OliveMed No. 1202-066 (Labex Agro ANR-10-Labex-0001-01 managed by Agence Nationale de la Recherche). GB is supported by LABEX entitled TULIP managed by Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-10-LABX-0041) and by the fellowship ANR-12-AGRI-0002. This is a LIA O-LIFE Contribution No. SA 9-2014. The authors are grateful to the Lebanese Council for Scientific Research for its kind support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Agronomy, Lebanese University, Dekwaneh, Beirut, Lebanon

    Lamis Chalak

  2. INRA, UMR 1334 Amélioration Génétique et Adaptation des Plantes (AGAP), 34070, Montpellier, France

    Hicham Haouane, Sylvain Santoni & Bouchaib Khadari

  3. Montpellier SupAgro, UMR 1334 AGAP, 34070, Montpellier, France

    Hicham Haouane & Laila Essalouh

  4. CNRS-UPS-ENFA, EDB, UMR 5174, Bât. 4R1, 31062, Toulouse Cedex 9, France

    Guillaume Besnard

  5. CBNMed, UMR 1334 AGAP, 34398, Montpellier, France

    Bouchaib Khadari

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  1. Lamis Chalak
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  2. Hicham Haouane
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  4. Sylvain Santoni
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Correspondence to Bouchaib Khadari.

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Lamis Chalak and Hicham Haouane have contributed equally to this work.

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Fig. S1

UPGMA dendrogram based on the Jaccard similarity index, to study the genetic relationships among the 73 cultivated olive trees genotyped by using 12 SSR markers. The olive trees are colored depending on their geographic origin (JPEG 106 kb)

Fig. S2

Frequency distribution of genetic dissimilarity for all pairwise comparisons between cultivated olive genotypes. (A) The whole data set; the trait separate respectively between groups of individuals with (G1; 1-5 dissimilar alleles) (G2; 6-13 dissimilar alleles) and (G3; more than 13 dissimilar alleles). (B) The ancients olive trees (Green) and young plantations (Red). Note that we removed from the analysis the four individuals intermediate between the groups as defined by PCoA analysis (cluster 1 and cluster 2; see Fig. S1) (JPEG 78 kb)

Fig. S3

PCA plot of the 73 Lebanese olive trees and relationships with genotypes of the Eastern Mediterranean group (JPEG 33 kb)

Table S1

List of the 73 olive trees used in the present study with their name, origin, and maternal lineage (XLS 46 kb)

Table S2

SSR characterisation of the lower and upper parts of the six monumental trees 5 (XLS 36 kb)

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Chalak, L., Haouane, H., Essalouh, L. et al. Extent of the genetic diversity in Lebanese olive (Olea europaea L.) trees: a mixture of an ancient germplasm with recently introduced varieties. Genet Resour Crop Evol 62, 621–633 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10722-014-0187-1

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