Chin J Plan Ecolo ›› 2015, Vol. 39 ›› Issue (10): 1003-1011.DOI: 10.17521/cjpe.2015.0097

• Orginal Article • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Population genetic diversity of wild Lycium ruthenicum in Qaidam inferred from AFLP markers

WANG Jin-Nan1,*, CHEN Jin-Fu2,*, Chen Wu-Sheng1, Zhou Xin-Yang3, XU Dong1, LI Ji-Hong1,**(), QI Xiao1   

  1. 1Key Laboratory of Agricultural Ecology and Environment, College of Forestry, Shandong Agricultural University, Tai’an, Shandong 271018, China
    2Forestry Research Institute of Qinghai Province, Xining 810016, China
    3School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Shandong University , Jinan 250012, China
  • Online:2015-10-01 Published:2015-10-24
  • Contact: Jin-Nan WANG,Jin-Fu CHEN,Ji-Hong LI
  • About author:

    # Co-first authors

Abstract: <i>Aims</i>

Lycium ruthenicum is a perennial shrub plant. It grows among rocks in deserts, and its populations are spatially scattered in the distribution range. The objectives of this study were investigating the population genetic diversity and genetic structure of L. ruthenicum in Qaidam and determining relationships between genetic diversity and environmental factors.

<i>Methods</i>

We analyzed the genetic diversity of 120 individuals from 5 natural populations using amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) markers.

<i>Important findings</i>

We obtained 1691 unambiguous bands from the nine pairs of selected primers, 1678 bands (99.23%) of which were polymorphic across all individuals. At the species level, the Nei’s gene diversity was 0.3649, and the Shannon’s information index was 0.5422. Analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) analysis indicated that most variations (92.0%) existed within populations, with only a small proportion of total variations residing among populations (8.0%, genetic differentiation coefficient is 0.08). The genetic similarity among the populations ranged from 0.9709 to 0.9922 with an average of 0.9835. Results of the Mantel test (γ = 0.3368, p = 0.8064) and unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean (UPGMA) cluster of the Qaidam populations indicated that the correlation between geographical distance and genetic distance was not significant. Principal coordinate analysis of all sampled individuals showed that individuals from each population did not cluster together. The genetic diversity of the same population indicated that the L. ruthenicum of Nomhon had high level of genetic variations, which indicated Nomhon is the center of the Qaidam wild L. ruthenicum populations.

Key words: Lycium ruthenicum, Qaidam, genetic diversity, AFLP