Analysis of genetic diversity in the free-pollinated F₁ population of Hippophae rhamnoides L. subsp. mongolica ‘Shenqiuhong’ via simple sequence repeat markers

Hippophae rhamnoides L. subsp. mongolica ‘Shenqiuhong’ is an excellent cultivar of sea buckthorn unique to China that is characterised by large fruits, high yield and no fruit drop even in winter, but this  cultivar is poorly adapted to areas south of China’s northern latitude of 40°. In this study, 358 free-pollinated offspring of ‘Shenqiuhong’ were evaluated for genetic diversity using simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers to comprehensively resolve the genetic diversity information of this population. The results of the present study revealed that the ‘Shenqiuhong’ half-sib family presented high genetic diversity. The 12 pairs of SSR primers amplified a total of 228 clearly identifiable loci, with an average of 19 loci per marker. The mean values of the observed number of alleles (Na), effective number of alleles (Ne), Shannon’s information index (I) and polymorphism information content (PIC) of the primers were 2.000, 1.361, 0.359, and 0.588, respectively. The results of the structural analysis, neighbour-joining (NJ) cluster analysis, and principal coordinate analysis (PCoA) were consistent, suggesting that the 358 offspring could be divided into two subgroups. The results provide a theoretical basis and material support for sea buckthorn breeding.