Genetic diversity assessment of wild populations of Paeonia lactiflora Pall. in Gyeongju National Park, Korea

ABSTRACT: Paeonia lactiflora is a valuable natural resource for horticulture and traditional Chinese medicine. To pro-pose conservation strategy and future utility of the wild Paeonia lactiflora populations recently found around the Gyeo-ngju National Park, genetic diversity analysis using microsatellite markers were performed. Three populations in and nearthe Gyeongju N.P. and one population from Jilin, China were analyzed for five microsatellite markers, producing 61 alle-les with mean observed heterozygosity(H o ) of 0.452. F ST value (0.11642) suggested moderate level of genetic differen-tiation among the populations, and hierarchical AMOVA suggested most of the genetic variation resides within/amongthe individuals rather than among-population. While AMOVA with F ST suggested lack of genetic differentiation betweenthe regional (Korean vs. Chinese) populations, AMOVA with R ST , which incorporates the allele sizes, suggested consid-erable differentiation between them, but without significant statistical support. STRUCTURE analysis also suggestedsegregation of regional populations with presence of gene flow among the three Gyeongju N.P. populations. Consideringsmall population size and scarcity of mature individuals, further protection and long-term monitoring are needed.