Knowledge of dormancy traits are important in peach breeding. Traditional method selection of seedlings takes a long time because of the juvenile period of plants; therefore, novel application of marker assisted selection methods are needed to accelerate this work. The aims of this study were to test the extent of variability in the PpSOC1 gene among 16 peach cultivars and to establish whether the variability of SOC1 can be used as a functional marker for the timing of endodormancy break based on a 14-year phenology evaluation covering nine consecutive phenology phases, from string stage to ripening. Based on an SSR motif of SOC1, three allele categories were detected: one peach cultivar was heterozygous (203/209), while five of the 15 homozygous cultivars carried a 203 bp allele and the remainder were characterized with 218 bp. There were significant correlations between the PpSOC1 alleles and the various phenology phases, the strongest one being observed at the string stage, marking the end of endodormancy. At this stage, PpSOC1 explained 82.6% of the phenotypic variance; cultivars with the 203 allele reached the string stage 11.7 days earlier than those with 218 bp allele. This finding makes the PpSOC1 screening a valuable method in breeding.
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