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.