Sampling for Core Collection with Genetic Diversity

This study was conducted to select sesame germplasm core collection with genetic diversity of landraces. A sesame core collection containing 475 accessions was established by assessing genetic diversity of 2,246 accessions of landraces collected in Korea. The accessions in the whole collection were grouped based on their varietal and 10 agro-climatic zones. Based on the dendrogram of the clusters, the random sampling combined with stepwise clustering was used to construct core collections. The coincidence rate for range and the variability rate for the coefficient of variation are designed to evaluate the property of core collections. By the criteria the final selected core collections retained genetic diversity and had representatives of whole collection.