Sunburst Oranges Knows DNA, Orange DNA That Is

We have been accused of Eating, And Sleeping, And Breathing Oranges around here. We must plead guilty to that.  Especially the “eating” part. From a Farmer’s point of view, the more you know about your crop the better off you are when it comes to raising the very best product you can.

So when we found this information we were intrigued by the depth and rigor of this scholarly research, that the work that went into it.

We don’t have the space here to even begin to do the full report justice. What follows is a thumbnail sketch of the report.

Citrus species are among the most important fruit crops in the world. They are widely grown in the tropical, subtropical, and borderline subtropical/temperate areas of the world. The genus Citrus was established by Carl Linneaus in 1753. Since the establishment of the genus, Citrus has attracted much research interest for more than 250 years.

The most widely accepted taxonomic systems today are those of Swingle (1943) and Tanaka (1977) who recognized 16 and 162 species, respectively. Scora (1975) and Barrett and Rhodes (1976) suggested that there were only three true species within the subgenus Eucitrus of Swingle’s system (i.e., C. medica, C. reticulata, and C. grandis). The other genotypes were derived from hybridization between these true species. Citrus has a long history of cultivation—more than 4000 years (Scora, 1988; Webber et al., 1967). However, the huge controversy over the phylogeny of key wild species, and the genetic relationship between the cultivated species and their putative wild progenitors have remained unresolved, mainly due to the sexual compatibility between Citrus and related genera, the high frequency of bud mutations, the long history of cultivation, and wide dispersion.

Previous studies on the genetic origin of cultivated citrus were mainly based on morphological, biochemical, and isozyme data (Barrett and Rhodes, 1976; Fang, 1993; Scora, 1988; Torres et al., 1978). Recently, DNA markers such as restriction fragment length polymorphisms (RFLPs), random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD), and sequence-characterized amplified regions (SCARs) were widely used to investigate the phylogenetic relationship of Citrus and its close relatives to infer into the genetic origins of the cultivated types (Federici et al., 1998; Nicolosi et al., 2000). More recently, DNA sequence data gave some clues about the progenitors of cultivated citrus (Bayer et al., 2009). Although these studies provided useful information for the origin of citrus and its taxonomy, the results have not been always in agreement. A clearer understanding of the citrus genetic background is necessary for better a characterization and utilization of citrus germplasm.

A total of 30 accessions was analyzed in the present study, including 24 belonging to the subgenus Citrus, three from the subgenus Papeda, and three from the genus Poncirus that were used as the outgroups.

If you wish to read the full article it is available in PDF form at; http://www.researchgate.net/journal/0003-1062_Journal_of_the_American_Society_for_Horticultural_Science_American_Society_for_Horticultural_Science

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