Introduction:

Spondias tuberosa is a tree endemic to the semiarid region of Brazil with fruticulture potential.

Objective:

To estimate the diversity and genetic structure of S. tuberosa accessions from four areas of the semiarid region of Brazil, in order to facilitate conservation genetic resources studies in this species.

Methods:

DNA was extracted, using the CTAB 2x method, from leaf samples of 24 accessions of S. tuberosa available in the germplasm bank at Embrapa Semiárido, Brazil. Ten microsatellite loci were used in this study.

Results:

The UPGMA dendrogram, generated with a Jaccard coefficient similarity matrix, contains four groups at a 0.44 cutoff point. The similarity coefficient ranged from 0.30 to 0.84, indicating great divergence among the accessions. A Bayesian analysis conducted with the software Structure suggests there are two subpopulations, one formed by accessions from the Januária region and another by accessions from the Juazeiro, Uauá and Petrolina regions. The ΦST value of 0.12 for the analysis of molecular variance indicates moderate genetic differentiation among the four populations, suggesting that the genetic variability is moderately structured in function of region.

Conclusions:

Together, the analyses indicate that the genetic diversity of S. tuberosa is not uniformly distributed in the studied regions. Thus, germplasm from a greater number of populations should be collected to increase the germplasm bank genetic diversity of the species.