Retrospective determination of the parental population of superior cacao (Theobroma cacao L.) seedlings and association of microsatellite alleles with productivity

Commercial production of cacao in Hawaii is increasing, and this trend is expected to continue over the next several years. The increased acreages are being planted with seedlings from introduced and uncharacterized cacao populations from at least three initial introductions of cacao into the islands. Productive seedlings have been selected from a planting at Waialua, Oahu. The parents of these selections were believed to be the population at the Hawaii Agriculture Research Center (HARC) at Kunia; however, potential parental populations also exist at Univ. of Hawaii research stations at Waimanalo and Malama Ki. Using microsatellite markers, we analyzed the potential parental populations to identify the parents and determine the genetic background for 99 productive and 50 unproductive seedlings from the Waialua site. Based on 19 polymorphic microsatellite loci the parental population was identified as trees from Waimanalo and not trees from Malama Ki or Kunia. The Kunia and Malama Ki populations were very similar with low allelic diversity (A = 1.92) and low unbiased gene diversity (H-nb) of 0.311 and 0.329, respectively, and were determined to be Trinitario in type. The Waimanalo, productive seedling, and unproductive seedling populations had much higher levels of genetic diversity with H-nb of 0.699, 0.686, and 0.686, respectively, and were determined to be upper Amazon Forastero hybridized with Trinitario in type. An additional 46 microsatellite markers were amplified and analyzed in the Waimanalo parents, productive, and unproductive seedlings for a total of 65 loci. Seventeen loci contained alleles that were significantly associated with productive seedlings as determined by Armitage's trend test. Of these, 13 loci (76.4%) co-located with previously reported quantitative trait loci for productivity traits. These markers may prove useful for marker assisted selection and demonstrate the potential of association genetic studies in perennial tree crops such as cacao.