Snake fruit (Salacca spp.), also called Salak, is a unique tropical fruit. The salak wild germplasm is distinct in Aceh, Indonesia, and with its larger variation, it has the potential for further development through breeding. Therefore, in Aceh, the identification and relationship of various salak accessions are necessary in producing superior genotypes; however, complete information is still unavailable. The presented study aimed to construct the relationship about the salak found in Aceh using the trnL-F intergenic spacer sequence. The salak different accessions collected from several areas in Aceh included the Seulawah Valley, Montasik, Sabang, Kutacane, and Leuser Ecosystem. In the phylogenetic tree construction, using the maximum parsimony (MP) and neighbor-joining (NJ) methods helped in the Phylogenetic Analysis Using Parsimony (PAUP). The results showed there are 206 parsimony informative characters to construct a phylogenetic tree. The MP cladogram separated the 18 salak wild and cultivated accessions into two groups. Based on the NJ analysis, evolutionarily wild type salak is assumedly the most primitive accession and could have genes for the various traits that may disappear in cultivated types due to domestication pressure. The same was also valid from the neighbor-joining cladogram with the shortest clade branch.
Salak, cultivated types, wild type, maximum parsimony method, neighbor-joining method, PAUP, trnL-F intergenic spacer
Relationship information of the salak (Salacca spp.) is crucial in developing future superior genotypes. Based on molecular data, the cladogram was able to separate the salak wild and cultivated types. Evolutionarily, the wild type could be the most primitive accession and seemed to have viable genes for the various traits.