Abstract
The assessment of diversity and population structure and construction of a core collection is beneficial for the efficient use and management of germplasm. A unique collection of common oat landraces, cultivated in the temperate climate of central Europe until the end of the twentieth century, is preserved in the Polish gene bank. It consists of 91 accessions that have never been used in breeding programs. In order to optimise the use of this genetic resource, we aimed to: (1) determine genetic and agro-morphological diversity, (2) identify internal genetic variation of the tested accessions, (3) form a core collection and (4) recognise the accessions useful for breeding programs or re-release for cultivation. The collection was screened using ISSR markers (1520 loci) and eight agro-morphological traits. Uniquely, we performed molecular studies based on 24 individuals of every accession instead of bulk samples. Therefore, assessment of the degree of diversity within each population and the identification of overlapping gene pools were possible. The observed internal diversity (Nei unbiased coefficient) was in the range of 0.17–0.31. Based on combined genetic and agro-morphological data, we established the core collection composed of 21 landraces. Due to valuable compositions of important traits, some accessions were also identified as useful for breeding programs. The population structure and principal coordinate analysis revealed two major clusters. Based on the previous results, the accessions classified within the smaller one were identified as obsolete varieties instead of landraces. Our results show that the oat landraces are, in general, resistant to local races of diseases, well adapted to local conditions and, in some cases, yielding at the level of modern varieties. Therefore, in situ conservation of the landraces in the near future may be satisfactory for both farmers and researchers in terms of the genetic resources preservation.
Highlights
The domestication of plants can be considered as one of the greatest achievements of mankind
The genetic diversity and the population structure of Polish oat germplasm has been analysed in the past using molecular markers [24,27,28,42,43]
Little is known about the amount and distribution of the genetic diversity and the population structure within the Polish oat landrace collection, as all above mentioned studies included only fragments of the collection
Summary
The overall aims of this work were (i) to determine ISSR based genetic diversity of the oat landraces stored in the Polish gene bank, (ii) to evaluate variation of agro-morphological traits, (iii) to identify internal genetic variation of each tested accession, (iv) to develop a core set representing the maximum diversity of Polish oat landraces and (v) to recognise accessions potentially useful for breeding programs or re-release for cultivation. The goal of our study was to describe the variability patterns of important agro-morphological traits in the landrace collection in order to improve breeding selection of cross parents
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