Abstract:

Ginkgo biloba L.，endemic to China，is one of the oldest remained tree species. Studies
were initiated to analyze the genetic diversity of 180 ancient ginkgo trees from 20 provinces in China
based on amplified fragment length polymorphic（AFLP）marker，and a preliminary construction of the
core core collection was established by using stepwise UPGMA clustering sampling approach. Eight AFLP
primers selected were used to generate 1 646 discernible DNA bands，100% were polymorphic. High
genetic diversity was revealed（number of different alleles，Na = 2.0000；number of effective alleles，Ne =
1.2575；Nei’s gene diversity，H = 0.1662；Shannon’s information index，I = 0.2746）. The molecular genetic
similarity coefficients rang from 0.6904 to 0.9115，with an average of 0.7919. The core collection of
ancient ginkgo trees with 63 individuals account for 35% of original collection. The results of t-testshowed that no significant different was found in genetic diversity indexes between the core collection and
original collection. These results demonstrated that the core collection could stand for original collection
excellently.

Key words: Ginkgo biloba, ancient tree, AFLP, genetic diversity, core collection