Broccoli Fiolaro (Brassica oleracea), an endangered typical Italian cultivar. A genetic analysis by SSR markers

‘Broccolo fiolaro’ (Brassica oleracea L. convar. Italica) is a typical vegetable produced in a restricted hill country area around Creazzo (Vicenza) in north-eastern Italy. The cultivation of this vegetable dates back several centuries ago, but a very few farms are still involved in the production. ‘Broccolo fiolaro’ is a variety of broccoli highly valued for its agronomic and organoleptic features. Four ‘Broccolo fiolaro’ selections were characterized by simple sequence repeats (SSRs) molecular markers and compared with other five cultivated varieties of broccoli of the Italica group in order to reconstruct their genetic structure and evaluate the degree of similarity among and within populations. The analysis of 12 SSR polymorphic loci pointed out a low genetic variability among the four ‘Broccolo fiolaro’ selections. Moreover, the whole ‘Fiolaro’ group showed significant differentiation from the other broccoli cultivars and could be easily distinguished by cluster analysis. An assignment test on ,30 genotyped plants randomly chosen from each broccoli population correctly recognized the proper accession 88% of the time, proving this method to be useful for cultivar identification.