Assessment of the Informativeness of SSR Markers for the Identification and Differentiation of Ukrainian Hazelnut Varieties

The study was aimed at assessing the efficiency of SSR markers for the identification and differentiation of Ukrainian hazelnut varieties. The studied material included 30 specimens of Corylus spp., comprising 25 hazelnut variaties and three Corylus species from the collection of the Sofiyivka National Dendrological Park (National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine). The polymorphism and informativeness parameters of nine microsatellite (SSR) loci were analyzed. All loci were found to be polymorphic, with the number of alleles per locus ranging from four to seven. The informativeness indices were as follows: polymorphic information content (PIC) ranged from 0.337 to 0.760 (mean 0.617); expected heterozygosity (He) ranged from 0.367 to 0.791; observed heterozygosity (Ho) ranged from 0.240 to 0.920. The results indicate the high efficiency of the analyzed SSR loci as molecular markers for the identification and differentiation of Ukrainian hazelnut variaties and their potential use in breeding programs.