Molecular Characterization and Phylogenetic Relationship of Cardamom from Colombia and Costa Rica

Cardamom in Colombia had a long process of conventional improvement, where material selection tests were carried out with the best harvest results, both in quantity and quality, obtaining an improved cardamom material, which was characterized by AFLP molecular markers in the year 2003. This improvement program began in the field in plantations in Colombia, in the department of Antioquia 30 years ago, carrying out a continuous process of selection of cardamom materials that showed a high productive potential, the plantations were separated into various lots within the same farm, which had an extension close to 1300 ha, the plants were crossed with each other and conserved for their subsequent evaluation of production and quality, and through repeated crossings and monitoring of the plantations, a clonal selection process was established for the crop. In this program, promising materials in productivity, color and capsule size are obtained, which were analyzed by the same author of this writing in 2003, using AFLP molecular markers, to determine polymorphisms between them, where she finds the majority of improved materials; Said breeding program and some data presented here are part of her research published 20 years ago, whose reference is presented in this chapter as Tamayo (Caracterización molecular de materiales seleccionados de cardamom—Elettaria cardamomum L. (Matón)—utilizando marcadores AFLP. Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Facultad de Ciencias Seccional Medellín, Trabajo de grado de Maestría en Biotecnología, 2003). In this study, improved, common, wild materials and a sample from Costa Rica were included, where it had been determined to be the ancestor of the Colombian material. After 20 years, some samples from that time and other current ones are selected, which were subjected to sequencing of the ITS2 region, and three more accessions from Costa Rica were included, located in two specific sites in that country. The phylogenetic tree obtained by correlating the sequences of the ITS2 region of the Colombian and Costa Rican materials, in 2003 and 2023, is analyzed to visualize the relationships between ancestral lines and current lines of cardamom. The genetic sequences of the evaluated materials are included as a source for further research.