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Population structure and genetic diversity in sweet cassava accessions from South of Brazil

Cassava (Manihot esculenta Crantz) is a crop of high socioeconomic importance for several tropical and subtropical regions of the world. It is mainly present in small cultivated areas that unintentionally guard a large part of the species' germplasm. The present work aimed to evaluate the population structure and genetic diversity of 156 traditional sweet cassava accessions from the Western of Paraná and Midwestern regions of Santa Catarina using 29 microsatellite molecular markers. All loci included were considered polymorphic, ranging from 3.00 to 7.00, with an average of 3.93 alleles per locus, and the average value of heterozygosity (Ho) was 0.6185. The polymorphism information content (PIC) presented an amplitude that varied from 0.4887 (GA134) to 0.7041 (GA131), with an average of 0.6130, while the genetic diversity ranged from 0.5688 (GA134) to 0.7424 (GA131), with an average of 0.6751. Analysis of the population structure based on the 29 microsatellite loci demonstrate that the accessions can be separated into two distinct subpopulations - in Santa Catarina and Paraná - with some mixtures observed according to Delta K = 2 groups. The ideal number of groups was found at K = 3, a level in which accessions from Santa Catarina were divided into two subpopulations and accessions from Paraná were grouped into a unique subpopulation. The genetic variability found among the traditional sweet cassava cultivars evaluated was considered wide, and the most dissimilar groups were mostly the accessions from Toledo and Santa Catarina states, constituting a source of genes for the sweet cassava breeding programs and for the development of new sweet cassava cultivars.