A preliminary comparative evaluation of genetic diversity between Chinese and Japanese wild soybean (Glycine soja) germplasm pools using SSR markers

The wild soybean, an annual self-pollinating plant, is the progenitor of soybeans and is extensively distributed in the Far East of Russia, the Korea peninsula, China and Japan. Geographically, Japan is surrounded by sea and insulated from China. We preliminarily evaluate whether the Japanese and Chinese wild soybean germplasm pools are genetically differentiated from each other using SSR markers. The results showed that the two pools have great genetic differentiation. Some loci presented obvious differences in mean genetic divergence (G(ST)) value between the two pools. The G(ST) among the geographic regions in China was higher than that in Japan. The average within-geographic region gene diversity values (H-S) in the two pools were completely identical and thus the genetic difference between the two pools was mostly attributed to the relatively high level of between-geographic region gene diversity (D-ST) in China. We suggest that Japanese and Chinese wild soybeans should be comparatively independently evolving in phylogeny.