Abstract
The present study undertook to further improve the identification of onion cultivars. Using nineteen sets of Sequence-Tagged Site (STS) primers designed in our previous report, the populations of allele frequency in an additional twenty-five Japanese cultivars were examined. Significance between the allele frequencies from each combination of the forty-five cultivars, including twenty reported previously, revealed that all but five cultivars could be identified, even though the total number of combinations for the forty-five cultivars was 990.
In addition, the variation in the population of allele frequencies derived for identical cultivars for two successive years was investigated using twelve domestic and foreign cultivars. The results showed that the allele frequencies were stable and there were few differences between successive years.
In addition, the variation in the population of allele frequencies derived from identical varieties between multiple cultivation areas was also investigated. This was undertaken using three cultivars that were commonly cultivated in western Japan. The results showed that there were few differences between the various cultivation areas. Furthermore, the finding that thirty-one market samples could be determined as being one of five possible onion cultivars revealed the accuracy of this technique. It was shown that the identification of individual onion cultivars was possible using this method.
