Confirmation of Parentage of the Pear Cultivar 'Niitaka' (Pyrus pyrifolia) Based on Self-incompatibility Haplotypes and Genotyping with SSR Markers

The parentage of the horticulturally important pear cultivar 'Niitaka' was confirmed by determining its S-genotypes based on the S-RNase and $PpSFBB^{-{\gamma}}$ genes, and genotyping using simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers. Previous reports suggested that the cultivars 'Amanogawa' and 'Imamuraaki' were the parents of 'Niitaka', although the cultivars 'Chojuro' and 'Shinchu' were also examined as candidate parents, along with two other cultivars. In the present study, the S-genotype of 'Niitaka' was determined to be $S^3S^9$. The $S^9$-RNase of 'Niitaka' was found to be likely inherited from the parent 'Amanogawa' ($S^1S^9$) and the $S^3$-RNase from 'Chojuro' ($S^3S^5$) or 'Shinchu' ($S^3S^5$). Based on the S-genotypes, the cultivar 'Imamuraaki' ($S^1S^6$) had no contribution to the parentage of 'Niitaka' ($S^3S^9$). A total of 67 polymorphic SSR markers were used to further confirm the parentage of 'Niitaka'. Discrepancies were found at several SSR loci between 'Niitaka' and the cultivars 'Imamuraaki' and 'Shinchu', whereas 'Niitaka' inherited alleles from 'Amanogawa' and 'Chojuro' at all SSR loci. Therefore, our findings established that 'Amanogawa' and 'Chojuro' are the parents of pear cultivar 'Niitaka', and not 'Imamuraaki' as previously reported.