Genetic Relation Analysis on Ramie [Boehmeria nivea (L.) Gaud.] Inbred Lines by SRAP Markers

The objective of this article is to reveal the variations of ramie inbred lines in DNA level and discuss their molecular background to provide a theoretical basis for ramie cross breeding. In the present study, the genetic relationships among 33 inbred line accessions and two wild types that originated from China and Brazil were estimated using sequence-related amplified polymorphism (SRAP) markers. The results showed that 33 out of 81 primer combinations turned out to be polymorphic and 332 polymorphism bands were obtained. On the basis of the appearance of the markers, the genetic relationships were analyzed using unweighted pair-group method of arithmetic average cluster analysis (UPGMA), and the genetic Jaccard similarity coefficients were calculated. The inbred-lines originating from China and Brazil formed a cluster suggesting a possibility that the Brazilian cultivars could have developed from cultivars introduced from China. Within ramie inbred-lines, the groupings also indicated that the greatest genetic relationship among cultivars was correlated to the region of origin of cultivars. The results provided the evidence that SRAP was an efficient approach, suitable for taxonomic analysis of ramie inbred lines. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first application of SRAP marker on the systematics of ramie inbred lines.