Constructing a Core Collection of the Medicinal Plant Using Genetic and Metabolic Data.

is an important medicinal plant in Chinese traditional medicine. Its roots, which are known as in Chinese, are broadly applied to treat inflammation, arthritis, and headache. With increasing market demand, the wild resources of have been overexploited, and conservation, assessment of genetic resources and breeding for this species is needed. Here, we sequenced the transcriptome of and developed simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers from it to construct a core collection based on 208 samples collected from Changyang-related regions. A total of 132 alleles were obtained for 17 SSR loci used with the polymorphic information content () ranging from 0.44 to 0.83. Abundant genetic diversity was inferred by Shannon's information index (1.51), observed (0.57) and expected heterozygosity (0.72). The clustering analysis resulted into two sample groups and analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) showed only 6% genetic variation existed among populations. A further metabolic analysis of these samples revealed the main coumarin contents, such as osthole and columbianadin. According to the genetic and metabolic data, we adopted the least distance stepwise sampling strategy to construct seven preliminary core collections, of which the 20CC collection, which possessed 42 individuals accounting for 90.20% of the genetic diversity of the original germplasm, represented the best core collection. This study will contribute to the conservation and management of wild germplasm resources and provide a material basis for future selection and breeding of this medicinal plant.