Explore the genetic diversity of the genus Pleione based on ITS and SCoT marker

The genus Pleione is a perennial herb of Orchidaceae with high ornamental and medicinal value. In recent years, the demand for Pleione has continued to increase and rare wild resources have been severely damaged or even endangered. Genetic diversity analysis of Pleione is the key to effective utilization and protection of wild germplasm resources and the basis of breeding. In this study, the relationship and genetic diversity of 16 individuals of 11 species of Pleione were assessed for the first time by ITS and SCoT molecular markers. A total of 84 bands were obtained from 11 SCoT primers with an average of 7.6 bands per primer, of which 83 (99%) were polymorphic bands. The genetic distances of different species of Pleione were 0.005-0.271, the variation range of genetic similarity coefficients among different individuals was 0.4524-0.9048. The effective number of alleles (Ne), Shannon's information index (I) and Nei genetic diversity (H) in the total population were 1.54, 0.49 and 0.33, respectively. The present result demonstrate that the genetic relationship of Pleione species can be analyzed by ITS sequence and the SCoT marker can be used for the genetic variation analysis of Pleione due to its good versatility and polymorphism. This research is of great significance for the identification and breeding of Pleione species.