The geographic origin of old Italian cypresses in North Italy revealed by nuclear SSR markers

The Italian cypress (Cupressus sempervirens L.) has an important role in the characterization of Mediterranean landscape mainly for its aesthetic and ornamental function and also because it is an excellent pioneer specie for reforestation and for timber production. Since antiquity cypress has been cultivated far beyond its natural geographic range for religious and aesthetic reason. At present its geographic distribution is characterized by disjoint populations or single plants. In this study genetic variability of 600 old cypress trees belonging to 26 populations from different part of North and Central Italy and one population from Turkey has been studied using SSR markers. Nine polymorphic SSR primers couples producing a total of 104 alleles. Turkey showed 15 private alleles. The number of observed alleles in all the populations per locus varied from 8 to 22. Values of Nei’ s gene diversity and Shannon information index suggesting that populations are characterized by low genetic variability probably due to the strong anthropic pressure that this species has undergone. AMOVA revealed a very strong differentiation between Turkey and all Italian populations and a good significant differentiation among Italian groups. UPGMA dendrogram shows two main clusters, one with all the North-Estern Italian populations and the second one with Tuscanians and North-Western Italian populations. The only exception is the population from Bozen. These results suggest that the artificial transfer of cypress reproductive materials highlighting the human-mediated manipulation of cypress populations in Italy and the political and commercial barriers that were present before the first world war.