Genetic Diversity of 52 Species of Kiwifruit (Actinidia chinensis Planch.)

Abstract

The genetic diversity of 52 kiwifruit wild germplasms, which were collected by the kiwifruit germplasm nursery of the Guangxi Institute of Botany, was studied using start-codon-targeted (SCoT) molecular markers. The objective was to understand the genetic relationships of the 52 kiwifruit wild germplasms. The results showed that a total of 113 bands were amplified from 52 wild kiwifruit germplasms using 10 primers (9–17 bands per primer, 11.3 on average), of which 103 (91.15%) were polymorphic bands (10.3 bands per primer). The genetic identity of the 52 wild kiwifruit germplasms was in the range of 0.405–1.000, with an average of 0.709. The genetic distance was 0.000–0.904, with an average of 0.355. At the threshold of 0.650, the germplasms were clustered into three clusters. The genetic distances between Guilin and Fushekuoye and between Jinhua and Liangye were both the smallest (0.000), meaning they had a similarity of 100%, as indicated by the SCoT molecular markers. In conclusion, the genetic relationships at the molecular level (genetic distance) were clustered preferentially according to the place of origin instead of by morphological classification, geographical distribution, or ploidy. The genetic relationships between wild kiwifruit germplasms were partially verified through disease resistance analysis.