Determination of Raspberry Cultivar Authenticity Based on Multiplexed Microsatellite Fingerprinting

ABSTRACT Raspberries (Rubus idaeus L.) are important vegetatively propagated fruit plants. They are used as food, as medicinal plants, and in pharmaceutical and cosmetic industry. For the protection of intellectual property rights, it is very important to have efficient methods that enable fast and accurate identification of cultivars. Raspberry cultivars can be differentiated in two ways: on the phenotypic level with morphological descriptors and on the molecular level with molecular markers. Among the frequently used are SSRs, which are highly informative, easy to score and have a good genome coverage. Considering 19 previously published SSR molecular markers, we selected the most specific loci for each selected genotype and developed specific fingerprint for each of the genotypes included in the study: four red raspberry cultivars (‘Polka,’ ‘Glen Ample,’ ‘Meeker,’ ‘Rose de Côte d’Or’) and two genotypes named Sicoly and Dieffenbach. The aim of our investigation was to demonstrate the differentiation between studied raspberry genotypes by specific amplified fragment patterns, which were unique for each genotype and were based on simple sequence repeats (SSRs). Furthermore, the developed fingerprints were successfully tested on randomly chosen, unknown genotypes.