Genetic diversity of Colletotrichum kahawae populations in Burundi

Abstract

Microsatellite markers were used to assess genetic diversity of Colletotrichum kahawae isolates from Burundi. Sampling was carried out through all coffee growing areas in Burundi. The indices of genetic diversity such as the number of different alleles (Na), the number of effective alleles (Ne) revealed low genetic diversity with an average of 1.900 and 1.196 respectively. Higher than expected heterozygosity and significant linkage disequilibrium are consistent with clonal reproduction. The results showed a weak genetic diversity between the populations from different region and the low value of Fst indicated that the C. kahawae populations of Burundi were weakly differentiated. Our results confirm the clonality of C. kahawae and its low dispersion ability. The weak differentiation between the populations and the occurrence of one clonal lineage in Burundi are consistent with previous study suggesting that the East African populations of C. kahawae are the most recently populations derived from the ancestral Angolan population.

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