Using of wild accessions of A. officinalis in asparagus breeding programs

A. officinalis is the most economically important species of asparagus. There are some wild accessions of this species from Iran that they are growing under different environmental conditions such as saline and dry soils and wide range of altitude and climate. Inter and intraspecific hybridization is a useful technique to introduce characteristics from wild species and accessions into crops. The overall purposes of the current study were to evaluate the possibility of using of wild accessions of A. officinalis species in asparagus crop breeding programs and also using of molecular markers as a valuable and useful tool to detect hybrid plants. In this study, successful interspecific hybridization was obtained for A. officinalis (2x) × A. persicus (2x) cross, by hand pollination. AG7 can be suitable molecular marker to detect interspecific plant for wild accession of A. officinalis (wild accession from Kerman province) in open pollination method and also controlled crosses. Specific allele in 187 bp length was identified by AG8 marker in A. officinalis wild accessions.