GENETIC VARIABILITY IN ?YERBA MATE? POPULATIONS FROM ARGENTINA AND PARAGUAY

STEPHANIE TALAVERA LILIANA; PERCUOCO C B; FAY J V; ROJAS C; J. G. SEIJO; MIRETTI M; ARGUELLES C

MONTEIDEO

Congreso; XVI Congreso Latinoamericano de Genética. IV Congreso de la Sociedad Uruguaya de Genética. XLIX Reunión Anual de la Sociedad de Genética de Chile. XLV Congreso Argentino de Genética.; 2016

GENETIC VARIABILITY IN ?YERBA MATE? POPULATIONS FROM ARGENTINA AND PARAGUAYTalavera Stéfani LN1, CB Percuoco1, JV Fay1, CA Rojas2, MM Miretti1, JG Seijo3, CF Argüelles1.1Laboratorio GIGA, FCEQyN, IBSNodo Posadas, UNaMCONICET2UNILA, Foz de Iguazú, PR, Brasil3IBONE, FACENAUNNE, CONICET.email: li_talavera@hotmail.comINTRODUCCIÓNIlex paraguariensis (Yerba Mate), a native forest tree from South America, has a great economic importance and it is mainly used in the preparation of a popular drink called ?mate? (Fig. 1; Montagnini et al., 2011). The speciesˈ geographical distribution includes the southern States of Brazil, the Oriental region of Paraguay, the northeast of Argentina and the northern region of Uruguay (Giberti, 1994). Currently there are few natural populations dispersed within forest remnants, due to both the over-exploitation of the trees and the progressively expanding areas of other crops (Winge, 1997). However, there are some up to 100 years-old cultivated populations of I. paraguariensis. Considering that the genetic variation is an important attribute that enables populations to adapt to spatial and temporal environmental changes (Pazouki et al., 2016), and the fact that there are no studies that analyze genetic diversity in natural populations of I. paraguariensis from Argentina and Paraguay, the aim of this work was to characterize the genetic variability in native and old cultivated yerba mate populations from Argentina and Paraguay using SSR markers, in order to evaluate the genetic variability of the species and assess the significance of the old crops as a reservoir of variability.