Artigo publicado nos anais do Congresso Brasileiro de Macaúba, em 2013.

Fekadu Gebretensay Mengeistu; Sérgio Yoshimitsu Motoike; Kacilda Naomi Kuki; Telma Fallieri Nascimento Queiroz

INTRODUCTION 

The macaw palm (Acrocomia aculeata Lood. ex Mart.), is a perennial, fruit-producing palm-tree native to tropical forests, and widely distributed throughout Central and South America. In Brazil, it mainly occurs in the states of Ceará, Minas Gerais, Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul and São Paulo (SCARIOT (Jacq.) et al., 1995). Its fruits constitute a potential source of oil for the cosmetic industry and as feedstock biofuel. According to Teixeira (2005), macaw palm can yield between 1500-5000 kg of oil per hectare, which makes the species with great potential for production of biodiesel. It is amongst others economically important flora of Brazilian savannah with great genetic variability in natural populations. However, this variability has been threatened by predatory extractivism, unsustainable land use and climate change (FALEIRO et al., 2008). Hence, characterization of accessions maintained in a collection and examination of the genetic relationship between them is a key for the sustainable conservation and increased use of the genetic resources. Germplasm characterization using microsatellites or simple sequence repeats (SSR) markers has experienced a great development and are well known for its potentially high information content and versatility as molecular tools (FERREIRA, 2005). The present work was therefore carried out to assess and quantify the extent of genetic variability in the macaw palm germplasm accessions conserved in a germplasm bank using microsatellite molecular markers.

Confira mais detalhes a seguir.