Relationships among Asian persimmon cultivars, astringent and non-astringent types

A molecular marker analysis for Asian persimmon cultivar relationships and pollination status was conducted with 496 amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) markers and 146 cultivars of Asian origin. Cultivars from China, Korea, and Japan were evaluated for marker composition and pollination status, which strongly influences fruit characteristics. Separation of Chinese, Korean, and Japanese cultivar groups and pollination type by neighbor-joining clustering, multidimensional scaling, and STRUCTURE was only weakly supported and not genetically significant. Significant differences for cultivar origin and pollination status were found for analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA), but most of the variation was among cultivars, not classification groups. All of the cultivar groups were genetically similar at the molecular level with most polymorphism due to individual cultivar differences.