Material Selection for Restoration of Genetic Diversity of Abies koreana on Mt. Jirisan in South Korea

A strategy is required for selecting appropriate materials for the restoration of Abies koreana on Mt. Jirisan, where the habitat of A. koreana is continuously shrinking. The current study aimed to analyze the genetic characteristics of A. koreana in three subpopulations (Banyabong, Byeoksoryeng, and Cheonwangbong) on Mt. Jirisan using 10 nuclear simple sequence repeat (nSSR) markers and calculate the sampling distance for each subpopulation for avoiding genetically similar samples. Based on the calculated sampling distance, we proposed the size of a sample containing more than 95% of the alleles at a frequency greater than 0.05. AMOVA showed that the difference in genetic variation across subpopulations of A. koreana on Mt. Jirisan was small, approximately 3% of the total. Spatial genetic structure analysis results suggested that it would be appropriate to collect samples of the Banyabong subpopulation at intervals of 10 m or more, when sampling A. koreana, whereas for the Byeoksoryeong and Cheonwangbong subpopulations, samples should be collected at intervals of 20 m or more. Results of random sampling of 5 to 30 individuals indicated that, by applying a 10 m distance within the Banyabong subpopulation, more than 95% of the total alleles with a frequency ≥ 0.05 were secured when more than 25 individuals were extracted. Therefore, as a restoration strategy for A. koreana on Mt. Jirisan, we proposed the collection of more than 25 samples, keeping 10 m distance within the Banyabong subpopulation, which has a relatively high genetic diversity.