Preservation and molecular characterization of 13 central Balkan landraces of faba bean (Vicia faba L.)

Abstract

An increasing interest in cultivation and improvement of faba bean (Vicia faba L.), an important food and feed grain legume whose ex siz genetic resources comprise cultivated forms only, triggers both search for novel genotypes and their molecular characterization. Due to the poor representation of faba bean genotypes from the central Balkans in worldwide ex situ collections, we collected seeds of 13 faba bean landraces from this region, preserved them at the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA) ex situ collection and used them also for amplification of ten nuclear microsatellites (simple sequence repeats — SSRs). Given the self-pollinating nature of faba bean and low heterozygosity levels in this crop, we assumed that relatively low number of alleles may be expected in each landrace. Therefore, we first demonstrated that all alleles obtained upon amplification of ten SSRs in 11 individuals from one landrace could be detected when DNAs from these individuals were pooled and such a bulk DNA was used as a template for PCR reactions, and then tested all SSRs in bulk DNA templates from each out of ten remaining landraces comprising six to 15 genotypes.