Estudo da variabilidade genética de espécies silvestres de Manihot Mill. (Euphorbiaceae) e seu uso para a taxonomia da seção Quinquelobae

Abstract

The objective of the present study was to characterize accessions of the wild species collection of Manihot at Embrapa Mandioca e Fruticultura using morphologic and SSR DNA markers to study the genetic diversity and taxonomy. The molecular analysis was carried out using 87 accessions. Cluster by the UPGMA method allowed the formation of two groups. The first comprised wild relatives of cassava (M. esculenta Crantz ssp. flabellifolia (Pohl) Cifferi e M. esculenta Crantz ssp. peruviana (Mueller) Allem), M. compositifolia Allem and one non-identified accession (FRF). The second group comprised the other accessions and was subdivided into two other groups. The first made up by species habit shrubby, mostly, from the cerrado region and rocky fields and a caatinga specie and the second formed by arboreal species, and mainly, from the caatinga and from the Northeast Region of Brazil. For the characterization of the accessions for the taxonomic study of the Quinquelobae species, microsatellites were able to separate species with strong biogeographic correspondence in all three analysis, where as the cophenetic correlation was very high (0.92**) for the analysis of the quantitative, categoric and molecular data simultaneously, using the Ward-MLM algorithm.