Genetic Diversity in a Collection of Chinese Sorghum Landraces Assessed by Microsatellites

Genetic diversity was characterized in a collection of 159 sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L. Moench) landraces gathered from the colder region (primarily the northeastern region) of China. A set of 41 microsatellites or simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers distributed throughout the 10 chromosomes of sorghum was utilized in the analysis. Majority (40 out of 41 SSRs, 98%) of the SSR markers were polymorphic and highly informative with polymorphism information content (PIC) value ranging from 0.05 to 0.92. An estimation of genetic similarity coefficients (GSC, with values ranging from 0.42 to 0.96) revealed a range of variability in this collection of sorghum landraces. Eight clusters of accessions were identified at a cut off at 0.50 GSC and these groupings were supported by the analysis of subpopulations using Structure. This study provides evidence that Chinese landraces of sorghum exhibit moderate genetic diversity and results from cluster analysis may well aid in identification of diverse accessions that can serve as parental lines for efficient utilization and application of these germplasm into sorghum breeding programs.