Genetic diversity of outstanding Cacao accessions (Theobroma cacao L.) from farmers’ field in Côte d’Ivoire using SSR markers

Abstract

Cocoa tree (Theobroma cacao L.) is an important commodity of Côte-d’Ivoire which lead the world for
cocoa export. In six producing regions of the country (Abengourou, Aboisso, Divo, Gagnoa, Daloa), 489
best trees have been selected by a breeder-farmer participatory manner based on the knowledge of farmers
about their planting material. Seedlings from each of these selected trees were used to study the genetic
diversity and the genetic structure using 12 microsatellites markers. Parental clones from seed gardens
were used as control populations. The microsatellites markers amplified 143 alleles in farmers’ accessions
and 78 alleles in control populations. The farm accessions revealed high within region and low between
region diversity. Most of the farm accessions appeared to belong to hybrids intermediate between Upper
Amazon (UA) and Lower Amazon (LA) Amelonado parental genotypes. However, certain of accessions
appeared to be rather pure UA or LA types. An important finding of this study is the allelic richness which
is higher in farmers’ accession than seed gardens parental clones suggesting the possibility of enlarging
the breeder’s collection by introducing farm accessions into working collection.