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Pueraria is not only one of the most important commercial crops, but a health supplement for human being. There are abundant Pueraria germplasm resources and a large planting scale in Guangxi. However, the genetic diversity and core germplasm of the Pueraria species in Guangxi are rarely understood. In this study, 272 individuals of Pueraria species in Guangxi combined with 23 pairs of simple sequence repeat primers were used to evaluate the genetic diversity and construct core germplasm. Ultimately, 118 alleles were identified and 112 alleles were polymorphic; the mean expected heterozygosity per locus is 0.1841, and the mean gene flow Nm is 1.7690. 272 individuals were divided into two main clusters, which is consistent with the results based on principal coordinate analysis and STRUCTURE cluster analysis. We proposed a core collection of 20 Pueraria accessions capturing 105 alleles. There was a non-significant relationship between genetic distance and geographical distance. The results could provide theoretical support for the scientific conversation of Pueraria genetic resources, which can serve as the basis for the breeding program of Pueraria.

Pueraria lobata and its variety P. lobata var. thomsonii are both traditional Chinese medicines that have high nutritional and medical value, whereas another variety, P. lobata var. montana has low nutritional and medicinal value and can cause ecological disasters. The material basis of different nutritional and medicinal values, which are caused by metabolite differences among these varieties, remains to be further clarified. Here, we performed ultra performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry based widely targeted metabolome analysis on Pueraria lobata, P. lobata var. thomsonii, and P. lobata var. montana. Among them, a total of 614 metabolites were identified, and distinguished from each other using orthogonal partial least squares discriminant analysis. Our results suggest that the nutritional differences between P. lobata and its varieties can be explained by variations in the abundance of amino acids, nucleotides, saccharides, and lipids, differences in flavonoids, isoflavones, phenolic acids, organic acids, and coumarins contents caused the differences in the medicinal quality of P. lobata and its varieties. Additionally, the key metabolites responsible for the classification of the three Pueraria varieties were identified. This study provides new insights into the underlying metabolic causes of nutritional and medicinal variation in P. lobata and its varieties.

To determine the genetic diversity and population structure of sweet potato accessions cultivated in China, and to establish the genetic relationships among their germplasm types, a representative collection of 240 accessions was analyzed using inter-simple sequence repeat (ISSR) markers. The mean genetic similarity coefficient, Nei's gene diversity, and shared allele distance of tested sweet potato accessions were 0.7302, 0.3167 and 0.2698, respectively. The 240 accessions could be divided into six subgroups and five subpopulations based on neighbor-joining (NJ) clustering and STRUCTURE results, and obvious genetic relationships among the tested sweet potato accessions were identified. The marker-based NJ clustering and population structure showed no distinct assignment pattern corresponding to flesh color or geographical ecotype of the tested sweet potato germplasm. Analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) revealed small but significant difference between white and orange-fleshed sweet potato accessions. Small but significant difference were also observed among sweet potato accessions from the Southern summer-autumn sweet potato region, the Yellow River Basin spring and summer sweet potato region and the Yangtze River Basin summer sweet potato region. This study demonstrates that genetic diversity in the tested sweet potato germplasm collection in China is lower than that in some reported sweet potato germplasm collections from other regions. Pedigree investigations suggest that more diverse Chinese sweet potato varieties should be formed by broadening the selection scope of breeding parents and incorporating the introduced varieties into future breeding programs.