THE ASSESSMENT OF POLYMORPHISM OF RUSSIAN RASPBERRY CULTIVARS USING MICROSATELLITE MARKERS.

The raspberry berries have outstanding nutritional and taste qualities and contain high levels of compounds with antioxidant activity (anthocyanins and others). Breeding of raspberries for the improvement of food traits can be significantly accelerated through the application of molecular markers. Seventeen varieties of raspberry and blackberry, including thirteen Russian cultivars with a wide variation of the berries coloring, were analyzed using 13 microsatellite loci. It is shown that the loci FJ194454, FJ194451, and AF29236 are specific only for raspberry, and the locus FJ194450 is only for blackberry. It has been established that the studied microsatellite loci can be used to identify raspberry cultivars of the Russian selection. It is shown that varieties with different coloring differ in the number of alleles in some microsatellite loci, what can be used for markerassisted selection for the content of anthocyanins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]