Assessment of the genetic diversity and genetic relationships of Lilium in China using ISSR markers

China is a center of natural distribution and diversity of genus Lilium around the world. In the study, the genetic diversity and genetic relationships of Lilium in China were analyzed by inter-simple sequence Repeat (ISSR) markers. The 6 highly polymorphic ISSR primers were selected to amplify the 20 Lilium species. The results showed that a total of 114 DNA bands were amplified, all of which were polymorphic loci (P = 100%), the effective number of alleles (Ne) was 1.2753, and the difference value between observed number of alleles (Na) and effective number of alleles (Ne) was 0.7247, and the Nei's genetic diversity (H) was 0.2048, and the Shannon's information index (I) was 0.3503. These results indicated that there is significant genetic difference among Lilium species in China. Taking the average genetic similarity coefficient (Gs) 0.5313 as the threshold, the 20 tested Lilium species were clustered into 5 groups, which was not entirely consistent with traditional clustering by morphological traits. The results obtained from this study can provide a reference for the molecular study of Lilium germplasm resources.