Genetic Diversity Among Korean Rice Landraces (Oryza sativa L.) Based on Characters and SSR Markers

In order to estimate genetic diversity of Korean rice landraces, rice characters and SSR markers of 76 rice germplasms were analyzed. Of 12 rice characters, amylose content (AC) showed as largest variance (4.9 to 28.9%), whereas grain length (GL) showed as the lowest variance (4.4 to 5.9 mm). In principal component analyses (PCA), the first principal component explained 60.3% of total variance, in which culm length (CL) and growth period (GP) showed as positive variance and AC showed as negative variance. The second principal component explained an additional 22.4% of the total variance, in which GP and AC showed highly positive variables and CL showed a negative variable. Forty nine SSR markers produced a total of 473 alleles with an average of 9.65 alleles. Polymorphism information content (PIC) was in the range of 0.11 to 0.93. Average observed heterozygosity ranged from 0.12 to 0.39, with an average value of 0.61. As a result of STRUCTURE analysis, 76 Korean rice landraces showed two subpopulations. In clustering analysis, rice characters and SSR markers were clustered into four groups and three groups, respectively. However, they were not significant different from each other. These results provided insight into the characteristics of Korean rice landraces, thus improving our knowledge on rice breeding.