Overall Assessment of the Molecular Analysis of Olives in Turkey

Olive (Olea europaea L.) is one of the oldest species cultivated in the Mediterranean basin. It has an important place in terms of human health with its fruit, oil and other by-products and it has been serving humanity with its economic importance for thousands of years. Cultured olive belongs to the genus Olea of the family Oleaceae and there are about 90 cultivars in Turkey. Other transitional forms between these varieties and wild olives forms constitute a wide genetic diversity. Interfertile olives and a lot of varieties have high levels of heterozygosity. While this makes it more difficult to verify varieties, the situation becomes more complicated when combined with cross pollinization. The phylogenetic relationships of Turkish varieties and these different forms have not been fully elucidated due to many reasons such as incorrect labeling, synonyms, local naming. Until the 1990s, varieties were identified with their morphological characteristics and separated from each other. This problem has begun to be resolved to some extent with the development of technology and the use of biotechnological methods in agriculture. Many researchers have been conducted in the world and in our country on identify cultivars and determine the relationships between cultivars with molecular markers. However there are some contrasts between the results of studies. The aim of this article is evaluate together the results of previous studies on Turkish varieties and to present the current situation for future studies