ORIGINAL ARTICLE Genetic Relationships Among Olive (Olea europaea L.) Cultivars Native to Turkey Ebru Sakar 1 • Hulya Unver 2 • Melike Bakir 3 • Mehmet Ulas 4 • Zeynep Mujde Sakar 5 Received: 8 February 2016 / Accepted: 16 February 2016 Ó Springer Science+Business Media New York 2016 Abstract Olive is a widely cultivated, mainly in the Mediterranean region, and economically important fruit species used as both olive oil and table olive con- sumption. In Turkey, more than 50 olive cultivars have been authorized for com- mercial plantations, representing the developmental base for the olive industry. The aim of the present study was to identify genetic relationships among the most widely grown 27 olive cultivars in Turkey, using microsatellite or simple sequence repeat markers. Nine well-known foreign olive cultivars from different countries are also included in the study to compare the Turkish cultivars. To determine genetic relationship and diversity, 10 SSR loci (DCA3, DCA9, DCA15, DCA18, UDO4, UDO9, UDO11, UDO12, UDO24, UDO28) were used. Jaccard’s similarity coef- ficient and the UPGMA method for cluster analysis were performed using the software NTSYSpc. The results showed that the number of alleles per locus ranging from 4 (UDO4, UDO9, UDO11, UDO12, DCA15) to 12 (DCA9) presenting high polymorphism. There were no identical cultivars. High similarity was shown by cultivars Maviand Adana topag ˘ ı (0.754). The most genetically divergent cultivars, Domat-Meski (0.240) and Domat-NizipYag ˘lık (0.245), were also identified. Keywords Olive Á SSR Á Molecular characterization & Ebru Sakar ebru.sakar09@gmail.com 1 Department of Horticulture, Faculty of Agriculture, Harran University, Sanliurfa, Turkey 2 Ankara University Kalecik Vocational School, Kalecik, Ankara, Turkey 3 Department of Agricultural Biotechnology, Faculty of Agriculture, Erciyes University, Kayseri, Turkey 4 Bornova Olive Research Institute, Izmir, Turkey 5 Department of Agricultural Economy, Faculty of Agriculture, Harran University, Sanliurfa, Turkey 123 Biochem Genet DOI 10.1007/s10528-016-9723-3