Genetic diversity of Arabica coffee (Coffea arabica L.) collections

Abstract

Arabica coffee (Coffea arabica L.) has its centre of origin and diversity in south-western Ethiopian highlands. Its populations exist as wild and under production systems. There is limited use of molecular genetic diversity information of Ethiopian Arabica coffee in the improvement programs. Thus, generating genetic diversity information is an important parameter in the future efforts of Arabica coffee genetic resources conservation and sustainable utilization. Hence, in this study the genetic diversity of Arabica coffee collections were studied using 32 microsatellite (SSRs) markers. The result indicated high genetic variability reserve with a lot of specificity in Ethiopian Arabica coffees. More than 90% of the total alleles were detected in Ethiopian Arabica coffee. Of the total alleles detected in Ethiopian Arabica coffee, about 83.7 % and 46.4 % were polymorphic and specific, respectively. The cultivated cultivars contained only 53.6 % of the total alleles detected in indicating the genetic diversity bottleneck due to early human impacts. In the cluster analysis, Ethiopian Arabica coffees with larger within population genetic distances were clearly separated from the cultivated cultivars. The result suggests the potential application of SSRs in genetic diversity study of Arabica coffee according to its origin and the possibility of high potential to use Ethiopian Arabica coffee gene pool in the improvement programs.