Glycine formosana Hosokawa in Taiwan: pod morphology, allozyme, and DNA polymorphism

Glycine formosana Hosokawa is distributed over the grassland along the rive rside and roadside at Dahshi, Guanshi, and Herngshan in Taoyuan county, Tai wan. It is a twining annual herb. It was long considered to be of the same species as G. soja, distributed widely in East Asia. Because the plant show ed a continuous variation with G. soja in appearance, Tateishi and Ohashi ( 1992) considered it a geographic subspecies and renamed it G. max subsp. fo rmosana (Hosokawa) Tateishi et Ohashi. This study attempts to determine the differences between G. formosana and the G. soja collected in China, Korea , and Japan. The materials were planted at National Chung-Hsing University. The pods, allozymes, and DNA polymorphisms were investigated. Glycine form osana has small seeds which are significantly different from the G. soja in China, Korea, and Japan. Lap1-d - one of the 16 loci of 9 allozymes exists only in G, formosana. Twenty-five random sequence 10-mer primers were empl oyed in RAPD analysis for all samples. Twenty-one produced bands, and 14 of those showed polymorphisms. One hundred and thirty-two bands were produced , and 84 bands (64%) showed polymorphisms. Based on the appearances of mark ers, the genetic similarity coefficients were calculated. Among different s amples of G. formosana, few genetic variations were observed (0.885 similar to 0.887). However, G. formosana showed marked differences from G. soja in China and Korea and nested within the Japan accessions.