Genetic analysis of fruit trees and cereals observed in the Phenological Network of Catalonia (Fenocat)
- Meteorological Service of Catalonia, Climatology Department, Barcelona, Spain (montserrat.busto@gencat.cat)
The Phenological Network of Catalonia is a citizen science organization formed by 60 observers who constantly monitor 25 plants (wild and cultivated species), 14 birds and 6 butterflies. The first event of the phenophases related to plant species is submitted annually to the Pan-European Phenological Database, PEP725.
Since we were unaware of most of the varieties observed, we launched a project to improve the information on the varieties of cultivated plant species and improve the quality of the data sent to PEP725. Besides, this genetic analysis of fruit trees would help us to discriminate those early blooming varieties from the late ones; knowing if a fruit tree variety is early or late allows us to discriminate the phenological behavior due to environmental answer from the genetic predisposition to an early or late bloom.
The Meteorological Service of Catalonia has a collaboration agreement with the Institute of Agrifood Research and Technology (IRTA), which is related to the Center for Research in Agricultural Genomics (CRAG). We have developed a project to know the varieties of the 135 fruit and cereal samples of cultivated species observed in the Fenocat network through genetic analyzes conducted by the CRAG.
To carry out this project, we designed a system so that the observer himself could take the vegetal sample from the observed vegetal individual and send it directly to the CRAG laboratory in the shortest possible time in order to avoid sample damage due to the delay.
The CRAG laboratory analyzed the DNA of each sample and studied the genetic markers. With this, it has been possible to establish the similarity matrix of the samples analyzed with those of the IRTA database.
We have been able to find out the variety of the cultivated plant samples in some cases, while in other ones no identical result to any known variety has been found -only the degree of similarity to a specific variety has been determined-.
How to cite: Busto, M., Cunillera, J., and de Yzaguirre, X.: Genetic analysis of fruit trees and cereals observed in the Phenological Network of Catalonia (Fenocat), EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 23–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-6899, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-6899, 2023.
