Applications and impact of molecular markers on evolutionary and diversity studies in the genus <i>Allium</i>

Abstract

Allium is a large variable genus containing ≅ 700 species, among them the economically important crops bulb onion, garlic and leek and many other crop species of minor or local importance. As the methods became available and more refined, systematic studies using biochemical and molecular markers were published to complement and offset the growing amount of data based on morphological, anatomical and other traditional approaches. Using isozymes and later restriction fragment length polymorphisms (RFLPs) and random amplified polymorphic DNAs (RAPDs), phylogenetic problems were addressed at all systematic levels of the genus and the interrelationships among crop species and their close relatives. The analysis of hybrid plants is another important application of molecular markers. Markers allow verification of the hybrid's cytoplasm, the composition of the nuclear genome, and investigation of introgression in backcrossing experiments.