Caracterização molecular de variedades crioulas de pimentas (Capsicum baccatum) com marcadores microssatélites

Currently, many landraces of C. baccatum are grown by farmers in Brazil. These populations are sources of genes for resistance or tolerance to abiotic and biotic stresses. However, most of these landraces are being lost due to genetic erosion caused by substitution of cultivars. In order to characterize and conserve landraces, since 2002 Embrapa Temperate Agriculture maintains an Active Germplasm Bank of Capsicum. This work has the objective to characterize landraces of C. baccatum using microsatellite markers. 20 accessions from the Active Germplasm Bank of Capsicum of Embrapa Temperate Agriculture were analyzed. DNA was extracted individually from young leaves collected from five plants of each accession. Eight microsatellite loci were analyzed. All loci were polymorphic. Molecular analysis of variance showed values of genetic diversity as 51.37% among accessions and 48.63% within the accessions. This fact showed the existence of segregation in many of these pepper landraces. The groups obtained by cluster analysis did not correlate with morphological fruit traits. Most of the genetic variability is found among different landraces, although there is also genetic variability within each accession.