Phylogenetic Relationships among Selected Citrus Germplasm Accessions Revealed by Inter-simple Sequence Repeat (ISSR) Markers

Abstract

ISSR markers were analyzed to study phylogenetic relationships among 46 Citrus L. accessions representing 35 species. A dendrogram based on the unweighted pair-group method, arithmetic average cluster analysis was constructed using a similarity matrix derived from 642 polymorphic ISSR fragments generated by 10 primers. These 46 accessions could be classified into five major groups: 1) C. indica Tan.; 2) C. maxima (Burm.) Merrill; 3) lemon [C. limon (L.) Burm.] or lime [C. aurantifolia (Christm.) Swingle] type accessions; 4) C. halimii B. C. Stone; and 5) sour orange (C. aurantium L.), mandarins and their hybrids. Group 5 was further divided into three subgroups. Although some previous work had grouped it with mandarins, C. indica appeared to be a distinct genotype or species that was not close to mandarins. C. tachibana Tan. grouped closely to mandarins. C. vulgaris Risso was not related to sour orange but was similar to accessions usually classified in the lime or lemon group. Sour orange and its hybrids, C. nippokoreana Tan., C. hanayu Hort. ex Shirai, C. sudachi Hort. ex Shirai, and C. yuko Hort. ex Tan. had close phylogenetic relationships with mandarins. Although the mandarin accessions studied were divergent in morphology, the genetic distances among them were relatively small. Relationships among these Citrus accessions revealed by ISSR markers were generally in agreement with previous taxonomic classifications.