Genetic Diversity and Structure in a Germplasm Collection of Pansies using SRAP Markers

Abstract

Pansies are one of the most important bedding flowers worldwide. Investigating the genetic diversity and identifying the genetic structure and relationships among germplasms are useful for geneticists and breeders. In this study, the genetic diversity and genetic structure of forty pansies germplasms from six breeding organizations were analysed by sequence-related amplified polymorphism (SRAP). Twenty-four primer pairs generated 430 polymorphic bands and showed high resolving power by 9.92 on average. The Nei’s gene diversity across 40 accessions was 0.271. Compared with the accessions from other organizations, the accessions from Jiuquan Jinqiu Horticulture Seed had high percentage of polymorphic bands and genetic diversity. As for flower size, the polymorphic bands percentage and genetic diversity of medium flower group were large. The genetic distances between mini flower group and others were relatively large. Most of accessions were grouped into three clusters that reflecting the genetic relationships of accessions correlated to their original place using principle coordinate analysis (PCoA) and unweighted pair group method arithmetic means (UPGMA). Bayesian analysis inferred that most pansies accessions had admixed genetic background, and they mainly derived from ‘Jonny Jump Up; ‘Schweizer Riesen’ and cultivars from PanAmerica Seed. These results can be helpful to germplasm introduction and crossing parent selection in pansies breeding