Author(s)

Guillermo Pérez, Ermis Yanez, Andrew Mbogholi, Bárbara Valle, Fernando Sagarra, Lourdes Yabor, Carlos Aragón, Justo González, Miriam Isidrón, José Carlos Lorenzo

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The Food and Agriculture Organization has highlighted pineapple as one of the most important tropical fruits. Since classical pineapple breeding is difficult, biotechnology has emerged as an attractive instrument. We obtained two new pineapple somaclonal variants derived from in vitro culture of cv. Red Spanish Pinar: P3R5 and Dwarf. The AFLP analysis revealed an existing genetic distance. So far 44 phenotype indicators selected due to their relation to a wide range of important agricultural, morphological and physiological processes have been evaluated. P3R5 differed from the donor in 19 variables (19/44; 43.18%), while Dwarf varied in 31 indicators (31/44; 70.45%). The number of shoots was significantly different among the three plant materials. Dwarf showed two shoots per plant while P3R5 and the donor did not form any shoots. We also observed that water use efficiency, chlorophyll b concentration, total chlorophyll concentration, transpiration rate, chlorophyll a concentration, thickness of leaf photosynthetic parenchyma, fruit mass with crown, content of free phenolics and superoxide dismutase specific activity were also very different among the three plant materials. The Euclidean distances of each somaclonal variant to the donor plant material taking into consideration the genotype (AFLP) and the phenotype evaluations were also calculated. Regarding the genotype information, P3R5 is separated from cv. Red Spanish Pinar by 2.83 units of Euclidean distance, and Dwarf by 3.00 units. However, the phenotype indicators revealed higher differences: 3.74 in P3R5 and 4.71 in Dwarf. To our knowledge, this is the first report of a comprehensive analysis of pineapple somaclonal variants.

Ananas Comosus (L.) Merr; Genotype Variation; Phenotype Variation

G. Pérez, E. Yanez, A. Mbogholi, B. Valle, F. Sagarra, L. Yabor, C. Aragón, J. González, M. Isidrón and J. Lorenzo, "New Pineapple Somaclonal Variants: P3R5 and Dwarf," American Journal of Plant Sciences, Vol. 3 No. 1, 2012, pp. 1-11. doi: 10.4236/ajps.2012.31001.