Genetic Structuration of Date Palm Populations

Date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) is mainly cultivated for its fruit and is of great socio-economic and ecological importance for the arid zones agriculture. However, despite the large date palm germplasm spreading from the Atlantic shores to Southern Asia, there is a lack of information on global genetic diversity, population structure and domestication history. In order to highlight the underlying influence of geographic origins and human activity influence on the genetic structure of the date palm, we assessed the distribution and the level of genetic diversity of accessible date palm resources via microsatellite markers. We analyzed accessions from more than 10 countries covering the actual distribution of the species in the ancient world confirming the existence of two ancient gene pools that have contributed to the current date palm diversity, the presence of admixed genotypes with gene flows following a human-mediated diffusion of the species and the existence of at least two domestication origins.

Emira Cherif^1,2, Salwa Zehdi-Azouzi¹, Oumarou Zango^2,13, Souhila Moussouni³, Muriel Gros-Balthazard^2,4, Summar Abbas Naqvi⁵, Bertha Ludena ^2,6, Karina Castillo², Nathalie Chabrillange², Nadia Bouguedoura³, Malika Bennaceur⁷, Farida Si-Dehbi³, Sabira Abdoulkader⁸, Abdourahman Daher⁸, Jean-Frederic Terral⁴, Sylvain Santoni⁹, Marco Ballardini¹⁰, Antonio Mercuri¹⁰, Mohamed Ben Salah¹¹, Karim Kadri¹¹, Ahmed Othmani¹¹, Claudio Littardi¹², Amel Salhi-Hannachi¹, Jean-Christophe Pintaud² and Frédérique Aberlenc-Bertossi²

¹Université Tunis El Manar, Faculté des Sciences de Tunis, Laboratoire de Génétique Moléculaire, Immunologie et Biotechnologie, Campus universitaire El Manar, 2092, Tunisia, ²IRD, UMR DIADE-F2F, DYNADIV, and EVODYN teams, 911 Av. Agropolis, BP 64501, 34394 Montpellier, Cedex 5, France, ³Université des Sciences et de la Technologie Houari Boumediene (USTHB), Laboratoire de Recherche sur les Zones Arides (LRZA), BP 32 Bab Ezzouar–El Alia, 16111, Alger, Algeria, ⁴Institut des Sciences de l’Evolution de Montpellier, UMR 5554, équipe Dynamique de la biodiversité, anthropo-écologie, Place Eugène Bataillon, CC 065, 34095 Montpellier cedex 05, France, ⁵Institute of Horticultural Sciences, University of Agriculture, 38040 Faisalabad, Pakistan, ⁶School of Biology, Yachay-Tech, Yachay City of Knowledge, 100119 Urcuqui, Ecuador, ⁷Université Oran1-Ahmed Ben Bella, Faculté des sciences de la nature et de la vie, Département de Biologie, BP 1524 El Mnaouar, 31000 Oran, Algérie, ⁸ISV/CERD, route de l’Aéroport, BP 486, Djibouti, ⁹INRA, UMR AGAP, 2 Place Viala, 34060 Montpellier, Cedex 1, France, ¹⁰Consiglio per la Ricerca e la Sperimentazione in Agricoltura-Unita di Ricerca per la Floricoltura e le Specie Ornamentali (CRAFSO), Corso degli Inglesi 508, I-18038 Sanremo (IM), Italy, ¹¹Centre Régional de Recherche en Agriculture Oasienne, 2260 Degueche, Tunisia and ¹²Centro Studi e Ricerche per le Palme, Corso F. Cavallotti 113, 18038 Sanremo, ¹³ CIRAD, UMR AMAP,34398, Montpellier, France