Study On Genetic Diversity Of Pinellia Ternata (Thunb.) Breit

Sixteen populations of Pinellia ternata (Thunb.) Breit. originated mostly from the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River valley were collected and cultivated in Weigang Experimental Farm of Nanjing Agricultural University under same cultural conditions in 1995, their differences in growth rhythm, main morphologic characters of plant and pollen grain, zymogram and band frequency of isozyme and chemical constitution have been observed and compared continuously for two years. The results are as following:1.There are three times of "Sprouting" and so-called "tumble" and two fast-growing periods for plants in most of the populations within a year in spring and autumn respectively. But the starting time and duration are very different from population to population, e.g. flowing being prior to sprouting in the population from Jurong county.2.As the result from fuzzy cluster analysis with sixteen main morphologic characters, sixteen populations of Pinellia ternata are divided to four types: Double bubils type, General type, Yixing type and Sheyang type.3.The difference in morphologic characters of pollen grain of the populations are observed with SEM. Pollen grain of Pinellia ternata from Jiangyan city is biggest (20.54 × 18.35 μ m) and the one from Peixian county is smallest (14.85 × 12.09 μ m). There are many spines on exine of the pollen grain, but length, density, head and base of spines are different in the populations. It is possible there are both operculum-treme and no-operculum-treme in the pollen grains.4. There are the common specific bands on the zymogram of three isozymes from the lamina for every population of Pinellia ternata, e.i. two bands of EST, three bands of SOD and one bands of POD. But the band frequency on the zymogram of three isozymes except specific bands are very different in the populations and even individuals of same population.5.The difference in contents of β -Sitosterol and Val. and Arg. extracted from tubers of populations of Pinellia ternata have been observed. Those contents are also different with different harvesting time. But the mean contents of each of the three types of chemicals in autumn are higher than those in summer respectively.6.Based on above results, the author suggested that the genetic diversity of Pinellia ternata is very abundant and it is difficult to study and measure the quality standard of Rhizome Penile on species level. Breeding new cultivator will be one of effective ways to set definite quality standard medicinal material of Pinellia ternata.