Core collection of ramie comprising 1151 germplasms based on simple sequence repeats and phenotypic markers

There are more than 2000 ramie germplasms in the Changsha Field GenBank of Ramie, China. Effective conservation, management, evaluation, and utilization of genetic resources are made difficult by redundancy, which can be avoided by constructing a core collection. To this end, the present study compared two core germplasm construction methods (PowerCore and PowerMarker software), and a core collection was developed. The collection generated using PowerCore was superior to that generated using PowerMarker software. The core collection consisted of 39 germplasms constructed from 1151 accessions based on 23 simple sequence repeats and three phenotypic markers. The number of gene types in the core collection was the same as that in the entire collection. The Shannon and Nei indices (19.2% of markers) were lower in the core than in the entire collection. These findings indicate that the core collection constructed in this study is useful and represents the genetic diversity of the entire ramie germplasm collection.