Construction of Core Collection using High Throughput Methodology and Phenotypic Variations in a Capsicum Germplasm Collection

The narrow genetic base of modern vegetable cultivars is a serious problem to improve crop productivity because of their vulnerability to new biotic and abiotic stresses. Plant germplasm are an important reservoir of genetic variations to be utilized for crop improvement. In Capsicum, according to the modern classification, there are five major cultivated species and over 22 wild species. They are cultivated in several regions in the world and have various distinct characteristics and traits such as degree of pungency, several colors, disease resistances and growth habits. However, germplasm in Capsicum have not been actively utilized for several reasons such as lack of passport information, evaluating useful traits, and characterizing phenotypic variations. Therefore, construction of core collection and analysis of genetic diversity is the first step to make full use of germplasm. Although there have been reported several attempts to construct core collections in Capsicum, most of these works were limited due to handling small number of samples or focusing only C. annuum species. To expand understanding of the phenotypic variations and genetic diversity of germplasm in Capsicum, we need to have a highly efficient phenotyping and genotyping tool to handle large number of samples. Toward this end, we are analyzing 3,599 germplasm accessions including other cultivated species and wild species in Capsicum with 48 single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers and 32 morphological traits. Based in these data, we are selecting a core collection of Capsicum.

* Corresponding author: Tel. 02-880-4563, E-mail: bk54@snu.ac.kr