‘Broccolo fiolaro’ (Brassica oleracea L. convar.
Italica) is a typical vegetable produced in a restricted hill country area around Creazzo
(Vicenza) in north-eastern Italy. The cultivation of this vegetable dates back several
centuries ago, but a very few farms are still involved in the production.
‘Broccolo fiolaro’ is a variety of broccoli highly valued for its
agronomic and organoleptic features.
Four ‘Broccolo fiolaro’ selections were characterized by simple
sequence repeats (SSRs) molecular markers and compared with other five cultivated
varieties of broccoli of the Italica group in order to reconstruct their genetic structure
and evaluate the degree of similarity among and within populations. The analysis of 12 SSR
polymorphic loci pointed out a low genetic variability among the four ‘Broccolo
fiolaro’ selections. Moreover, the whole ‘Fiolaro’ group
showed significant differentiation from the other broccoli cultivars and could be easily
distinguished by cluster analysis. An assignment test on ~30 genotyped plants randomly
chosen from each broccoli population correctly recognized the proper accession 88% of the
time, proving this method to be useful for cultivar identification.