Evaluation of Genetic Diversity among Soybean Genotypes Using SSR and SNP

Two different types of molecular markers, simple sequence repeat (SSR) and single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP), were used to measure genetic diversity among five Korean, eight Thai, and three wild soybeans. For SSR analysis, a total of 20 markers were surveyed to detect polymorphisms. For SNP analysis, four primers were designed from consensus sequence regions on disease resistance protein homolog genes, and used to amplify the genomic region. The PCR products were sequenced. A number of polymorphic SSR and SNP bands were scored on all genotypes and their genetic similarity was measured. Clustering analysis was performed independently on both types of markers. Clustering based on SSR markers separated the genotypes into three main groups originated from Korea, Thailand, and wild soybeans. On the other hand, two main groups were classified using SNP analysis. It seemed that SSR was more informative than SNP in this study. This may be due to the fact that SNP was surveyed on the smaller genomic region than SSR. Grouping based on the combined data of both markers revealed similar results to that of SNP rather than that of SSR. This might be due to the fact that more loci from SNP were considered to measure genetic relatedness than those from the SSR.