Preliminary Study on SSR Analysis in Natural Populations of Actinidia

Genetic diversity was preliminarily investigated for nine natural populations of two commercially important species of Actinidia chinensis and A. deliciosa using SSR genetic markers. Fourteen SSR loci were initially screened, and the result showed that high polymorphism existed in eight of the fourteen SSR primers, which were good reproducible primers. A total of 222 alleles were revealed from 8 polymorphism loci. A high level of genetic diversity was detected in A.chinensis and A.deliciosa, with mean number of alleles per locus A=17.3(range: 12.13-20.75), percentage of polymorphic loci P=100, and polymorphism information content (PIC) values range from 0.87 to 0.96 with an average of 0.936. Moreover, a large number of common alleles were found both in A.chinensis and A.deliciosa, suggesting a very close relationship of these two taxa. This study provided molecular evidence for explaining the genetic structure of natural populations of Actinidia and for further uses in making conservation strategy.In addition, it supplemented population reference for evaluate the system and evolutionary relationship between A.chinensis and A.deliciosa.