Identification of cherry rootstock (Prunus spp.) using SSR markers

The Gisela series cultivars ‘Colt’, ‘Sargent Cherry’, and ‘Dalian 1’ are widely considered effective, convenient, and economically significant rootstocks for intensive sweet cherry cultivation in temperate zones. However, the identification of these rootstocks in plant nurseries is particularly difficult. In particular, Giessen plants are more difficult to identify because they are full siblings from an interspecific cross of P. cerasus L. ‘Schattenmorelle’ × P. canescens (Webster and Schmidt, 1996) and therefore, morphologically similar. As a result of next generation sequencing technology, sequences of cherry are available, and it is now possible to use these sequences to identify simple sequence repeat (SSR, microsatellite) markers, which can be used to distinguish between closely related biological specimens. Accordingly, the goal of the present study was to evaluate the suitability of the SSR markers reported in the Genome Database for Rosaceae (GDR, http://www.rosaceae.org) for identifying cherry rootstock cultivars. The cherry rootstocks could be distinguished using a combination of the SSR markers that were developed in Prunus species. SSR markers have several advantages over other molecular markers.