086 Preservation and DNA Fingerprinting Historic Prunus × yedoensis Germplasm from the Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C.

Abstract

The historic Japanese flowering cherry trees planted around the Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C., were given to the United States in 1912 as a gift from Japan, and have become a popular tourist attraction. Unfortunately, only a small portion of the original trees remain, and these trees are in various states of decline due to old age and stress. In cooperation with the National Park Service, we have propagated from cuttings nine trees that are known to be original and 10 trees that are thought to be original. DNA from these and other P. × yedoensis were compared using RAPD markers. Twenty-one 10-nucleotide primers yielded 80 repeatable bands that were used to assess genetic distance among the accessions. Twenty of these bands were monomorphic across all 28 accessions tested, so were not informative. The frequency of the remaining 60 bands varied from 0.04 to 0.96, with an average frequency of 0.58. Thirteen of the accessions, including six of the nine that are known to be original germplasm, were identical at all loci tested. Other accessions that are thought to be original trees were similar, with similarity values of 0.93 to 0.99. The most genetically dissimilar trees were P. × yedoensis accessions from our collection that were collected as seed in Japan. Accessions obtained from commercial nurseries including `Afterglow', `Akebono” and Yoshino were also dissimilar to the Tidal Basin trees. This study indicates that most of the older trees planted around the Tidal Basin are genetically very similar, but that variability in P. × yedoensis exists, especially in accessions collected as seed from Japan.