Genetic distinctiveness of a Protected Geographic Indication lentil landrace from the region of Umbria, Italy, over 20 years

Traceability of local and typical food products is essential for market protection and consumer trust. DNA analysis is the most dependable tool to identify the biological materials present in a food product. In this work, we molecularly characterized an important local product of the Umbria region, a lentil landrace named after the village Castelluccio di Norcia, in the province of Perugia, Italy, awarded the Protected Geographic Indication (PGI) ‘‘Lenticchia di Castelluccio di Norcia’’ by the European Union in 1997. Four accessions from a 1994 collection were compared with accessions acquired in 2016 at local retailers, in comparison with two commercial samples from grocery stores and two foreign varieties. Twelve simple sequence repeat (SSR) molecular markers allowed to clearly establish the genetic distinctiveness of local lentil. High allelic diversity and very low heterozygosity were observed in Castelluccio samples. The 1994 materials were closely related, as shown by pairwise Fst and by Principal Coordinates Analysis. Little divergence between 1994 and 2016 samples was found, possibly due to 20 years of cultivation in different farms, but one of the 2016 samples was unrelated, as were the two commercial samples. The genetic identity of the Castelluccio landrace is still preserved locally, but may be put at risk by the presence on the market of unrelated materials labeled as PGI. In Castelluccio accessions, as many as 42 private SSR alleles were documented, which can be implemented to develop molecular traceability tests.