Development of a core collection for ramie by heuristic search based on SSR markers

There are more than 2000 ramie germplasms in the National Ramie Germplasm Nursery affiliated with the Institute of Bast Fiber Crops, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science, China. As it is difficult to perform effective conservation, management, evaluation, and utilization of redundant genetic resources, it is necessary to construct a core collection by using molecular markers. In this study, a core collection of ramie consisting of 22 germplasms was constructed from 108 accessions by heuristic search based on 21 Simple Sequence Repeat (SSR) marker combinations. The results showed that there is a poor relationship between the core collection and the geographic distribution. The number of amplification bands for the core collection was the same as that for the entire collection. Shannon's index for three of the SSR primers (14%) and Nei's index for nine of the SSR primers (19%) were lower in the core collection than in the entire collection. The true core collection had wider genetic diversity compared with the random core collection. Collectively, the core collection constructed in this study is reliable and represents the genetic diversity of all the 108 accessions.