The origin of the self-compatible almond ‘Guara’

Abstract ‘Guara’ has been the most planted almond cultivar in Spain in recent years. The introducers of this cultivar reported its origin as unknown and suggested that it is related to the Italian almond cultivar ‘Tuono’. Indeed, the experience of farmers and researchers has revealed strong similarities between ‘Guara’ and ‘Tuono’. In order to compare the identity of the two cultivars, their genetic profiles (fingerprints) were determined with a set of 12 SSR markers used to analyse the INRA clones of ‘Guara’ and ‘Tuono’ as well as two clones considered synonymous with ‘Tuono’, namely ‘Supernova’ and ‘Mazzetto’. A supplementary set of 23 SSRs was also analysed in ‘Guara’ and ‘Tuono’ samples from different reference collections of CEBAS-CSIC (Murcia, Spain), INRA (Avignon, France), IRTA (Constanti, Spain), and the University of Bari (Bari, Italy). The results confirmed that ‘Guara’ and ‘Tuono’ present identical DNA fingerprints for the 35 SSRs analysed. This genotypic information together with the similar characteristics of the two cultivars demonstrates that Spanish ‘Guara’ is actually the same cultivar as the Italian ‘Tuono’.