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Origins of Japanese flowering cherry (Prunus subgenus Cerasus) cultivars revealed using nuclear SSR markers

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Abstract

Japanese flowering cherry (Prunus subgenus Cerasus) cultivars, which are characterized by beautiful flowers, have been developed through hybridization among wild Prunus taxa. The long history of cultivation has caused significant confusion over the origins of these cultivars. We conducted molecular analysis using nuclear simple sequence repeat (SSR) polymorphisms to trace cultivar origins. Bayesian clustering based on the STRUCTURE analysis using SSR genotypes revealed that many cultivars originated from hybridization between two or more wild species. This suggests that morphological variations among flowering cherry cultivars probably arose through a complex sequence of hybridizations. Our findings generally supported estimates of the origins of cultivars based on morphological study, although there were some exceptions.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by research grant #200904 of the Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute and the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan, grant number 24380087. We thank members of staff of the Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden for granting us permission to investigate and collect materials. We also thank the editor and anonymous reviewers for their constructive suggestions.

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Correspondence to Shuri Kato.

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Communicated by A. Dandekar

Electronic supplementary material

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Online Resource 1

Population or individual identifier and number of samples collected for thirteen Prunus taxa (PDF 102 kb)

Online Resource 2

Sample details for Prunus campanulata and Prunus pseudocerasus. Samples assigned the same number had the same genotypes, suggesting that they were clonally derived. (PDF 95 kb)

Online Resource 3

Sampling locations for twelve Prunus taxa. The number of samples collected in each location is shown in Online Resource 1. Some samples of P. campanulata and all samples of P. pseudocerasus were collected from the organizations listed in Online Resource 2. (PDF 809 kb)

Online Resource 4

Japanese flowering cherry cultivars investigated in this study. Genotypes with small differences at only one or two loci were distinguished by assigning branch numbers, and formally treated as a single clone. (PDF 209 kb)

Online Resource 5

Inferences, from morphological classification and STRUCTURE analysis, on the origins of Japanese flowering cherry cultivars. The abbreviated names used for P. campanulata, P. pseudocerasus, P. pendula f. ascendens, P. apetala var. apetala, P. apetala var. pilosa, P. incisa var. incisa, P. incisa var. kinkiensis, P. nipponica, P. sargentii, P. verecunda, P. jamasakura, P. lannesiana var. speciosa are cam, pse, pen, ape, ape.pil, inc, inc.kin, nip, sar, ver, jam and lan.spe, respectively. Circle: Prunus taxon believed to influence the cultivar; hyphen: taxon not exerting an influence on the cultivar. The baseline information was obtained from the descriptions in ten scientific papers listed in the Sample Collection section of Kato et al. (2012). The significance of each q value is given by ‡ if the probability interval (PI) > 0.5, † if PI > 0.25 and +if PI > 0, and these values are also shown in boldface. Hyphen: q value less than 0.01. The clusters most probably representing individual taxa are named on the basis of the corresponding taxonomic names, and the cluster names are defined in Table 1. (PDF 318 kb)

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Kato, S., Matsumoto, A., Yoshimura, K. et al. Origins of Japanese flowering cherry (Prunus subgenus Cerasus) cultivars revealed using nuclear SSR markers. Tree Genetics & Genomes 10, 477–487 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11295-014-0697-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11295-014-0697-1

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