Olive (Olea europaea L.) is one of the economically most important fruit crops for the
Mediterranean area, with production being mainly destined to oil extraction. In Sicily, olive
has been cultivated since ancient times and its germplasm is characterized by a wide
genetic diversity that could be related to its domestication and spread in ancient times,
and to some reproductive biological peculiarities as self-incompatibility. This analysis was
conducted on 65 genotypes with the purpose of characterizing a large collection of Sicilian
accessions (47 genotypes) and to compare them with varieties coming from Southern Italy
and from the most important countries of the Mediterranean basin. With this aim we used
8 simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers, which detected a total of 74 alleles and identified
an average of 19.5 genotypes in the population investigated. A larger variability than expected
was found in the analyzed genotypes, some synonymies already reported in
literature were confirmed, but also some cultivars considered as identical were discriminated
such as in the case of Castriciana, Ogliarola messinese and Passalunara. The whole
study revealed a wide intraspecific variability within the gene pool examined, independently
from the geographical origin.