Differentiation of indigenous balloon flower (Platycodon grandiflorum DC.) germ lines in South Korea by using RAPD analyses

Abstract

The total production volume has been sharply increased from year 2008 in Gyeongnam province, SouthKorea by the policy of preservation and promotion of indigenous balloon flower germ lines. In an attempt to assist the Gyeongnam province' s policy, in this study, we tried to establish a technique to differentiate the indigenous balloon flower germ lines with those collected within South Korea and China. Our preliminary results indicated that RAPD analyses with five different primers exhibited high frequency of polymorphic DNA bands up to 76.9% and phylogenetic tree indicated that some of the indigenous lines can be easily differentiated with others. However, it was suggested that more advanced techniques such as single nucleotide polymorphic markers need to be developed in particular, by using extra-chromosomal DNA.