Comparison and confirmation of SNP-bud burst associations in European beech populations in Germany

Genetic Variation of European Beech Populations and Their Progeny from Northeast Germany to Southwest Switzerland

“…20 cm tall seedlings growing underneath them were sampled in 2011 [31]. For the German populations, leaf samples were taken from seedlings raised from beechnuts in a greenhouse at Göttingen University as described in [17,34]. Briefly, beechnuts of the populations DE-SEW5, DE-SEW9, DE-HEW6, DE-HEW10, DE-AEW5, and DE-AEW8 were collected in September/October 2011.…”

“…After drying, the beechnuts were stored at −10 • C until January 2012. The beechnuts were germinated and the established seedlings (from which leaf samples were taken) were planted out in the forest in September/October 2012 [17]. Beechnuts of the other German populations DE-GL, DE-GS, DE-US, DE-CL, DE-CS, and DE-HA were collected in fall 2009.…”

“…SSR data were obtained from several published studies [15,17,[28][29][30][31]34]. Data of the adult populations DE-SEW5, DE-SEW9, DE-HEW6, DE-HEW10, DE-AEW5, and DE-AEW8 were obtained from Rajendra et al [15] (data set ID "11560" available from the Biodiversity Exploratories Information System, https://www.bexis.uni-jena.de/PublicData/About.aspx).…”

“…Neutral genetic diversity may also indirectly reflect population fitness being a good indicator of effective population size and total diversity [13]. In general, European beech has a high genetic diversity, revealed in different studies based on various genetic markers, such as isozymes, microsatellites or simple sequence repeats (SSRs), single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and amplified fragment-length polymorphisms (AFLPs) [14][15][16][17]. Nevertheless, little is known about the current impact of climate change on the transfer of genetic information from adult populations to their seedlings.…”

“…We combined data from different studies and complemented them with new genotyping data [15,17,[28][29][30][31]. The previous studies focused on aspects such as SNP-trait/-environment associations, management impact on genetic structures or the genetic variation of beech on the local scale.…”