Genetic diversity within and between seedstock populations of several German autochthonous provenances and conventionally propagated nursery material of blackthorn ( Prunus spinosa L.)

Genetic diversity within and between seedstocks of autochthonous provenances of common blackthorn ( Prunus spinosa L.) from several locations in Germany was determined and compared with the diversity in conventionally propagated (German and Hungarian) seedstocks using a highly reproducible high-annealing-temperature random amplified polymorphic DNA (HAT-RAPD) protocol. Based on the distribution of 359 markers obtained with 11 primers we found relatively low genetic diversity in the studied autochthonous blackthorn populations ( H 0 0.1182–0.1333), with the majority distributed within the populations (92.22%) and only 7.78% among them. Similar levels of diversity were also found in the conventional seedstocks. Accordingly, genetic differentiation among these populations is rather low (pairwise F st 0.0284–0.1266). In one case, we were not able to differentiate between an autochthonous population and conventional ( F st 0.0284) one. We discuss the results with respect to German conservation laws and their practical implementation.