A practical solution to assess the origin of maritime pine reproductive material in France using chloroplast single sequence repeats

Maritime pine seed-lots from northwestern Iberian regions (Portugal and
Galicia) were introduced in the 1950s to the southwest of France (Aquitaine
region), and the stands they formed suffered considerable frost damage. In
the mid 1980s, a biochemical test was developed to test the putative origin
of adult stands in Aquitaine, before seeds could be distributed for
commercial purposes in France. In this paper, we describe a new test
employing chloroplast simple-sequence repeats (cpSSRs) to facilitate
identification of stand origin based on randomisation tests. The origin of
five stands of unknown origin was determined with both the cpSSR and
biochemical (terpene profile analysis) tests. The results from the two
tests were concordant, but the DNA-based test gave faster and more accurate
results. Use of this test should help when determining the origin of
maritime pine stands in the Aquitaine region of France.