Diversity in local cultivars of Pisum sativum collected from home gardens in Sweden

Abstract Although one would assume that finding any local cultivars in home gardens in a modern society such as Sweden is unlikely, such cultivars were in fact found. More than 170 seed accessions of vegetables, pulses and other seed-propagated garden crops maintained in home gardens and dating back at least to the 1950s have been assembled following the nationwide ‘Seed Call’. Of these, 32 garden pea accessions were taxonomically characterized and compared with 43 accessions already present in the gene bank. In addition to morphological descriptors, SSR and retrotransposon-based iPBS markers were applied. Based on five SSR markers, potential duplicates could be located within nine pair/gro…