Home – Home – Jornals – Siberian Journal of Forest Science 2016 number 5

Three native populations of P. sylvestris, ssp. lapponica (Alakurtti, Gridino, Pjaozero) and six native populations of P. s., ssp . sylvestris (Voinitsa, Maslozero, Vodlozero, Zaonezshye, Kivach, Sortavala) along with one artificial population - Petrozavodsk seed orchard have been studied using four nuclear microsatellite primers (Spac11.8, Spac12.5, PtTX2123, PtTX2146) to find out the peculiarities of Scotch pine intraspecific diversity in Karelia. In total, 66 alleles were found. All four loci turned out to be polymorphic in all populations. The observed heterozigocity level of all studied Karelian populations was lower than expected, which is evidence of heterozygotes deficiency in Karelian pine populations. Overall, the investigated P. sylvestris populations can be described as having a high level of the genetic variability especially compared to results obtained earlier by isozyme analyses. The Petrozavodsk seed orchard ought to be mentioned as having one of the highest levels of the genetic variability, which gives evidences in favor of good state regarding representativeness of Scotch pine gene pool here. No substantial differences in genetic structure and diversity levels have been found for ss . lapponica populations vs . ss. sylvestris ones. AMOVA analysis showed that despite the significant differences between pine populations, considering both the allele composition and the genetic diversity, the major part of the variety (90 %) was allocated inside group. The investigated populations were subdivided into two clusters using UPGMA technique characterized by substantial Nei distance ( D_N = 0.273). The former one included the majority of Karelian pine populations ( D_N = 0.030-0.082) along with the Alakurtti population from Murmansk region. The latter cluster consisted ofthe most isolated «Kivach» and «Zaonezshye» populations, which had the lowest levels of genetic diversity, and the «Petrozavodsk seed orchard».