Evaluation of Genetic Diversity in Korean Fir Cultivars Based on Microsatellite and Cytoplasmic Markers

Abstract

<jats:p>Korean fir (<jats:italic>Abies koreana</jats:italic>) has been cultivated for less than 100 years, mainly in the United States and Europe. Using nuclear microsatellite, mitochondrial, and chloroplast markers, we investigated the origin of cultivated korean fir from South Korea (KC group) as well as the United States and United Kingdom (EU group), and compared these samples to published data from wild populations. All genotypes in the EU and KC groups were most closely related to the wild individuals from Mt. Hallasan, the southernmost <jats:italic>A</jats:italic>. <jats:italic>koreana</jats:italic> population on Jejudo Island (South Korea). However, the presence of the chloroplast haplotypes clustered with <jats:italic>Abies balsamea</jats:italic> in two EU cultivars and the higher diversity values of the EU group compared with the wild individuals from Mt. Hallasan infer a certain level of introgression from different species during cultivation. The EU group had a higher inbreeding coefficient and linkage disequilibrium, and a smaller proportion of rare alleles, than the wild populations. This suggests that the genetic characteristics of korean fir cultivars reflect strong artificial selection pressure for desirable horticultural traits and asexual reproduction. Last, this genetic background study suggests that the other wild populations in the Korean peninsula can serve as valuable genetic resources for future breeding.</jats:p>

Genetic variation and population history of three related fir species Abies sachalinensis, A. nephrolepis and A. gracilis (Pinaceae) revealed by nuclear microsatellites

“…An important condition for the adaptation of taiga co ni fers to changing environment is the magnitude and structure of genetic variability. The genetic variability of the con sidered species has been previously investigated using dif ferent type of markers -allozymes (Nagasaka et al 1997, Se me ri kova et al 2011, AFLP (Semerikova et al 2011), ISSR (Woo et al 2008), mitochondrial markers (Semerikova et al 2011, Jiang et al, 2011, Kwak et al, 2020, Semerikov et al 2022) and chloroplast microsatellites (Semerikova & Se me rikov 2007, Semerikova et al 2012. Recently, highly va riable microsatellite loci (nSSR) have been used for this pur pose (Hong et al 2011, Hong et al 2016, Kwak et al 2020, Kitamura et al 2020, but these studies were limited to the Hokkaido and the southern Korean Peninsula only.…”