Evaluation of Genetic Diversity among Persimmon Cultivars (Diospyros kaki Thunb.) Using Microsatellite Markers

The genetic diversity among 48 persimmon (Diospyros kaki Thunb.) accessions, indigenous in Korea and introduced from Japan and China, was evaluated by using simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers. From 20 SSR primer sets, a total of 114 polymorphic markers were detected among 12 pollination-con-stant non-astringent (PCNA), 13 pollination-variant non-astringent (PVNA), 15 pollination-variant as-tringent (PVA), and 8 pollination-constant astringent (PCA) cultivars. Analysis of pair-wise genetic similarity coefficient (Nei-Li) and unweighted pair-group method with arithmetic averaging (UPGMA) clustering revealed two main clusters and four subclusters for cluster I. The subclustering pattern was in accordance with the classification of persimmon cultivars based on the nature of astringency loss. Phenetic relationships among the subclusters showed a closer relatedness of the PCNA group with the PVNA group, and the PVA with the PCA group. Genetic similarity co-efficiency was 0.499 on average and the highest (0.954) similarity was observed between ‘Cheongdo-Bansi ’ and ‘Haman-Bansi’. The similarity was lowest (0.192) between ‘Damopan’and ‘Atago’. Identification of each cultivar with the execption of ‘Cheongdo-Bansi ’ and ‘Gyeongsan-Bansi ’ was possible based on the SSR fingerprints, suggesting that these SSR markers are a useful tool for protecting intellectual property on newly de