• Horticultural Science & Technology
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.232-239
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• 2011

The genus Acorus is known as an indigenous medicinal plant. Genetic diversity of thirteen accessions of A. calamus and eight of A. gramineus, with an accession of Colocasia antiquorum and two of Iris pseudacorus as outgroups, were evaluated using RAPD markers for cluster analysis and principal coordinate analysis, and NIR spectroscopic profiles for principal component analysis.A total of 371 polymorphic bands were obtained by using the selected 12 random primers. The genetic distances were estimated from 0.03 to 0.31 within A. calamus and from 0.03 to 0.51 within A. gramineus. The dendrogram and three-dimensional plot separated the accessions into four distinct groups (A. calamus, A. gramineus, C. antiquorum, and I. pseudacorus). Moreover, for the diversity among genus Acorus, eleven A. calamus accessions, one A. gramineus accession, and two I. pseudacorus accessions were non-destructively analyzed from their leaves by NIR spectroscopy, which discriminated Acorus accessions like the RAPD analysis. Interestingly, thirteen accessions of A. calamus were clustered into two groups based on RAPD and NIR analyses, which indicates that there are two ecotypes of A. calamus in Korea. An accession (CZ) of A. calamus with yellow stripe on leaves was closely grouped with another (CX) at a genetic distance (GD) of 0.03, which shows that the stripe trait might be generated by chimeric mutation. The genetic distance between A. calamus and A. gramineus was revealed to be farthest from 0.80 to 0.88 GD. In genus Acorus the genetic diversity and genetic variation were identified by using RAPD marker technique and non-destructive NIRs.