Genetic diversity of wild Prunus cerasifera Ehrhart (wild cherry plum) in China revealed by simple-sequence repeat markers

Abstract

ABSTRACT. Simple-sequence repeat (SSR) markers were employed to assess the genetic diversity of wild Prunus cerasifera Ehrhart (wild cherry plum) in China. Fourteen SSR primer pairs generated a total of 94 alleles (90 were polymorphic, accounting for 95.74%), with a mean of 6.71 alleles per locus. The number of alleles detected at each locus ranged from 2 at BPPCT 028 to 13 at BPPCT 002, with an average of 6.71 alleles per locus. Nei's genetic diversity ranged from 0.0938 to 0.4951 and Shannon's information index ranged from 0.1706 to 0.6882, with averages of 0.3295 and 0.4899, respectively. The SSR data indicated moderate genetic diversity of P. cerasifera in China. In the unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean phylogenetic tree, the 40 forms of P. cerasifera were divided into 3 genetic clusters. However, the 3 clades determined using SSR data were not consistent with the classification based on morphological characters, such as fruit color. Because of the endangered status and the moderate genetic diversity of P. cerasifera in China, both in situ and ex situ conservation strategies should be adopted.

Molecular Genetic Characterization of the Turkish National Green Plum (Prunus cerasifera Ehrh.) Collection

“…Thus, our data suggest that Turkish P. cerasifera germplasm has a high genetic diversity that is similar to that seen in nearby countries. In general, other studies have indicated that P. cerasifera germplasm population structure is simple with two to three subpopulations (Ayanoğlu et al, 2007;Zhao et al, 2015;Urbanovich et al, 2017). In our work, the dendrogram analysis revealed two main clusters with a small third group of five accessions.…”

“…According to this range, our mean genetic diversity value was 0.78. Ayanoglu et al (2007) and Zhao et al (2015) found the lowest levels of genetic dissimilarity in their studies which examined Turkish (0.09) (this extremely low value may be the result of the small number of accessions studied) and Chinese (0.33) germplasm. Other research using P. cerasifera accessions from France, Iran and Belarus had mean diversity values of 0.65, 0.68 and 0.72, respectively (Horvath et al, 2008;Wöhrmann et al, 2011;Urbanovich et al, 2017), which agree with the level of diversity seen in our Turkish material.…”

“…When SSR markers were used to determine genetic diversity in P. cerasifera, they were found to have similarly high levels of polymorphism as SRAP markers with 96% of fragments showing polymorphism in 40 Chinese accessions (Zhao et al, 2015). As compared to SSR markers, SRAPs are somewhat more economical as the same markers can be used for many different species while SSR markers are usually developed on a species-specific level.…”

“…Therefore, it is important to characterize this germplasm with all available methods (phenological, horticultural, molecular genetic) to ensure that these valuable resources are maintained and used for optimal benefit. To date, only a limited number of molecular genetic diversity analyses have been done within P. cerasifera (Ayanoglu et al, 2007;Horvath et al, 2008;Wöhrmann et al, 2011;Zhao et al, 2015). As a result, there is a need for assessment of the genetic diversity and structure of more plum specimens using different molecular markers.…”