Genetic diversity within and between seedstock populations of several German autochthonous provenances and conventionally propagated nursery material of blackthorn (Prunus spinosa L.)

Genetic diversity within and between seedstocks of autochthonous provenances of common blackthorn (Prunus spinosa L.) from several locations in Germany was determined and compared with the diversity in conventionally propagated (German and Hungarian) seedstocks using a highly reproducible high-annealing-temperature random amplified polymorphic DNA (HAT-RAPD) protocol. Based on the distribution of 359 markers obtained with 11 primers we found relatively low genetic diversity in the studied autochthonous blackthorn populations (H 0 0.1182–0.1333), with the majority distributed within the populations (92.22%) and only 7.78% among them. Similar levels of diversity were also found in the conventional seedstocks. Accordingly, genetic differentiation among these populations is rather low (pairwise F st 0.0284–0.1266). In one case, we were not able to differentiate between an autochthonous population and conventional (F st 0.0284) one. We discuss the results with respect to German conservation laws and their practical implementation.