DNA Analysis as a Tool in Sea Buckthorn Breeding

Sea buckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides L., Elaeagnaceae) is a dioecious windpollinated shrub with nitrogen fixing ability. The berries have bright colors, varying from yellow, orange to red. Domestication of sea buckthorn started in Siberia in the 1930s (Kalinina and Panteleyeva 1987). Local germplasm (ssp. mongolica) from the Altai mountains was used in the onset of the breeding. Breeding projects have, later on, been initiated also in other countries such as Germany (Albrecht 1990), Finland (Yao and Tigerstedt 1994), China (Huang 1995), and Canada (Li and Schroeder 1996). At SLU-Balsgård, Sweden, breeding of sea buckthorn started in 1986. Conventional breeding methods, including germplasm evaluation, hybridization and selection, are used (Trajkovski and Jeppsson 1999). The Swedish food industry is very interested in the berries as a raw material for various food products as marmalade, beverages and as a flavor. Sea buckthorn is not yet grown at a commercial scale in Sweden. The main objective is to develop cultivars suitable for large scale production of berries in Sweden. We work mainly with adaptation, disease resistance, growth habit that will permit machine harvesting, and improvement of fruit quality and yield. The plant material used in our breeding program has been derived from domesticated Russian forms (ssp. mongolica) and native Scandinavian forms (ssp. rhamnoides). Initially, 28 genotypes were selected. Nine superior selections are now being tested in full scale orchards both in northern and southern Sweden. Recently we started to use the PCR-based method RAPD (Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA) to study population structure in the ssp. rhamnoides and to find a marker linked to gender determination.