Abstract
The common sea buckthorn or seaberry (Hippophae rhamnoides) is important environmentally, commercially, and as a new berry crop. Some morphological differences among mother plants and lines obtained by cuttings often lead a purchaser to question if the propagated plantlets are true-to-name cultivars. Intersimple sequence repeat (ISSR) markers were employed to assess the genetic stability of lines obtained by cuttings of four H. rhamnoides cultivars and the genetic relationships among them. Fifteen ISSR primers generated 174 bands among the 35 samples of four cultivars, 158 of which (90.8%) were polymorphic. Percentages of polymorphic and unique bands between mother plant and propagated plantlets ranged from 53.21% to 77.17% and from 7.09% to 13.76%, respectively. Cluster analysis based on ISSR data indicated that at a Jaccard coefficient of 0.78, mother plant and lines obtained by cuttings for each cultivar were grouped into different subclusters, respectively, which could be further clustered into different sub-subclusters. Our data first indicated that the genotype was affected by the cutting process to a certain degree, because there were some morphological and low molecular variations between the mother plant and lines obtained by cuttings. Information generated from this study can be used to select parents for hybrid development to maximize desirable agronomic traits in a breeding program aimed at developing segregating populations to map genes controlling special traits in H. rhamnoides.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This research was funded by the Keystone Project of the Agriculture Science and Technology Research Item of the Liaoning Scientific and Technological Committee (No. 2007207005) and the preparative fund of Dalian Nationalities University (No. 0212-112012).