Genetic similarity among cultivars of Phyllostachys pubescens

Phyllostachys pubescens is the most important economic bamboo species in China, which grows widely in the South of China. There are more than ten cultivars in this species but their genetic relationship still remains unknown. We used both amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) and inter-simple sequence repeat (ISSR) techniques to determine genetic similarity among ten cultivars of P. pubescens and two related species. Eight hundred and twenty seven bands, in which 495 are polymorphic, were detected using 15 pairs of AFLP primers whereas total 231 bands, in which 154 bands are polymorphic, were scored using 16 ISSR primers. Statistic analysis showed that the genetic similarity matrices obtained from these two sets of molecular markers had a significant correlation (R = 0.959, P = 0.013). The dendrogram generated with AFLP and ISSR markers could clearly genetically identify ten cultivars of P. pubescens that had high similarity with genetic distances ranging from 0.023 to 0.108, and could be divided into three groups based on their genetic variation and similarity. Our results suggest that these molecular markers are useful to genetically classify cultivars or varieties of a species, particularly a bamboo species.