Construction and genetic characterization of an interspecific raspberry hybrids panel aiming resistance to late leaf rust and adaptation to tropical regions

Raspberries (Rubus spp) are temperate climate fruits with profitable high returns and have the potential for diversification of fruit growing in mid to low-latitude regions. However, there are still no cultivars adapted to climatic conditions and high pressure of diseases that occurs in tropical areas. In this context, our objective was to evaluate the genetic diversity from a 116 raspberry genotypes panel obtained from interspecific crosses in a testcross scheme with four cultivars already introduced in Brazil. The panel was genotyped via genotyping-by-sequencing. 28,373 and 27,281 SNPs were obtained, using the species R. occidentalis and R. idaeus genomes as references, respectively. A third marker dataset was constructed consisting of 41,292 non-coincident markers. Overall, there were no differences in the results when using the different marker sets for the subsequent analyses. The mean heterozygosity was 0.54. The average effective population size was 174, indicating great genetic variability. The other analyses revealed that the half-sibling families were structured in three groups. It is concluded that the studied panel has great potential for breeding and further genetic studies. Moreover, only one of the three marker matrices is sufficient for diversity studies.