Abstract

This study aimed at establishing a core collection based on the analysis of data from Simple Sequence Repeat (SSR) alleles and morphological and agronomical traits (MOR) of the primary core collection from apricot germplasm resources. The index of genetic diversity, and frequency ratios of retention and loss of the alleles were studied between cluster and random sampling methods at 5 sampling ratios. The results demonstrated that the cluster sampling method preceded random sampling, and cluster sampling of SSR combined with MOR at the rate of 80% was the best sampling strategy among all the sampling methods. Based on this sampling strategy, 120 accessions were selected as the core collection of apricot, which retained 100% alleles in the primary core collection and 100% phenotypic characters. The core collection developed had also been evaluated by using the data of 6 quantitative traits, which showed that the established core collection could well represent the genetic diversity of the original collection of 1501 apricot accessions.

Key words: Apricot, core collection, sampling strategy, simple sequence repeat (SSR) molecular marker.

Abbreviation

Abbreviations: Ia, Index of genetic diversity of alleles; Ip, index of genetic diversity of phenotype; MOR, morphologic and agronomic traits; RRa, retained ratio of alleles;RRp, retained ratio of phenotype.