Wf. Lamboy et al., PARTITIONING OF ALLOZYME DIVERSITY IN WILD POPULATIONS OF MALUS-SIEVERSII L AND IMPLICATIONS FOR GERMPLASM COLLECTION, Journal of the American Society for Horticultural Science, 121(6), 1996, pp. 982-987
One of the primary progenitors of the cultivated apple is Malus siever
sii L., a species native to the forested regions of central Asia. Desp
ite the horticultural importance of M. sieversii, little is known abou
t genetic variation in this species. In this study, allozyme diversity
at 18 loci was determined for 259 seedlings belonging to 31 sib famil
ies, each consisting of the set of offspring from a different open-pol
linated maternal (seed) parent. Maternal parents belonged to 14 popula
tions from four geographic regions. Genetic diversity statistics were
computed from the resulting allele and phenotype frequencies. Cluster
analysis of sib families showed that there was some grouping based on
geographic region, but 16 of the sib families were most closely relate
d to sib families from other regions. Analysis of molecular variance (
AMOVA) indicated that 85% of the enzyme variability was due to differe
nces among sib families within populations and 15% was due to differen
ces among regions. No variability could be assigned to differences amo
ng populations within regions. In addition, no alleles were found that
were fixed in a region and unique to that region. These results sugge
st that plants belonging to M. sieversii effectively form a panmictic
population. Consequently, a thorough sampling of a few large populatio
ns will efficiently capture most of the genetic diversity present in w
ild M. sieversii.