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Abstract
There are over 3,000 registered varieties of peaches worldwide. The mission of peach breeding programs is to develop new varieties that are better adapted to modern challenges such as disease, climate change, and shifting consumer preferences. These programs endeavor to preserve their genetic diversity, avoid inbreeding, and maintain future breeding potential. The purpose of this thesis can be summarized by the definition of history - “knowing where you were to define where you are going”. The first goal of this project was to assess the level of inbreeding, kinship, and to identify the founding parents of the Mid-Chill UGA-UF-USDA Joint Peach Breeding Program using historical pedigree data. We found that inbreeding and kinship were low compared to similar studies, with some founding parents being overused. The second goal of this project was to identify new potential sources of genetic diversity for peach. Peach can be found growing in feral populations outside of their center of origin, including in Australia. Our hypothesis was that Australian individuals would more closely resemble Chinese material than other regions. Using SNP data obtained via Capture-Seq technology, 250 Prunus accessions from around the world, including a small number of Australian samples, were evaluated to discern their diversity and relatedness. It was revealed that the small sample of Australian feral materials were genetically distinct from North American, European, and Asian populations, marking them as a potentially valuable source of novel germplasm.