Acta Agriculturae Zhejiangensis ›› 2026, Vol. 38 ›› Issue (8): 1574-1588.DOI: 10.3969/j.issn.1004-1524.20250455

• Horticultural Science • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Basic characteristics and genetic variation of genome-wide simple sequence repeats in Asian lotus (Nelumbo nucifera)

HUANG Guohong1,2(), MA Yini2, HE Jiaxin2, TU Li2, LIAO Weibiao1,*(), LIU Fengluan2,*()   

  1. 1 College of Horticulture, Gansu Agricultural University, Lanzhou 730070, China
    2 Shanghai Key Laboratory of Plant Functional Genomics and Resources, Shanghai Chenshan Botanical Garden, Shanghai 201602, China
  • Received:2025-06-21 Online:2026-08-25 Published:2026-09-14

Abstract:

To gain deeper insights into the genetic characteristics of simple sequence repeat (SSR) across the whole genome of Asian lotus (Nelumbo nucifera), 33 representative accessions were used as materials. Whole-genome resequencing was used to analyze genome-wide SSR loci and their motif features, and to investigate the associations between SSR genetic variation and phenotypic traits including germplasm origin, flower color, petal type, and ecotype. The results showed that the average number of SSR loci in the Asian lotus genome was 64 253.8, with a range of 25 961 to 119 777. Among the eight SSR types, namely imperfect (c*), compound (c), and mononucleotide (p1) to hexanucleotide (p6) repeats, p1 and p2 SSRs were the most abundant, accounting for 55.38% and 29.91% of the total, respectively. SSR counts exhibited a gradually increasing trend from wild types to modern cultivars and landraces; the number of SSR loci in double-petal lotus was 83 298.6, which was 1.6 times that of the single-petal type (51 874.6). No significant difference in SSR number was observed between temperate and tropical lotus. Perfect p1 to p6 SSRs contained an average of 2.0, 4.0, 10.0, 23.6, 49.8, and 88.6 motif types, respectively, with the three most abundant motifs being A/T (52.173%), AG/CT (16.971%), and AT/AT (11.358%) in descending order. This study delineated the detailed differences in genome-wide SSR counts and motif composition among representative Asian lotus individuals, revealed a highly conserved proportional pattern across the eight SSR types, and suggested that hybridization and artificial selection have promoted both an increase in the number of genomic SSR loci and an enrichment of their motif diversity.

Key words: Nelumbo, Asian lotus (Nelumbo nucifera), simple sequence repeat (SSR), motif, flower color, ecotype

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