An ecoregional analysis of morphological variation in British Columbia coastal strawberries (Fragaria) for germplasm protection

In order to enhance the utilization and protection of wild Fragaria germplasm from coastal British Columbia, patterns of morphological variation were assessed in plants from the Pacific coastal region of Canada. Twenty-five characters were evaluated in 87 plants grown in the uniform garden at the Canadian clonal genebank. Seven characters including the number of veins, length of the terminal tooth, roundness of tooth, tooth distribution, leaf thickness, leaf color and leaf surface were significant at the 5% level in distinguishing ecoregional groupings, and a discriminant analysis was also significant. The major pattern of variation involved plants from southern Vancouver Island to the upper Strait of Georgia, ecoregions 192 and 194, which have thinner, paler, more glaucous leaves with less broadly rounded teeth, suggesting hybridization of F. chiloensis with F. virginiana. A clustering of ecoregional group centroids using the unweighted pair group method with arithmetic averages indicated that, in order to optimally protect genetic variation, 28.35% of the protected accessions should be selected from each of ecoregions 192 and 194, with ecoregion 191 accounting for 15.98%, and the remaining ecoregions contributing 13.66% of accessions.