Abstract: In order to establish a core collection of Chinese traditional carrot germplasm, a total of 340 accessions was evaluated for 4 quantitative and 9 qualitative traits and the data were submitted for cluster analyses. Under the suitable threshold value, the accessions thatwere closer to the value were selected as candidates to form core collection. Three samp ling p roportions of 10% , 15% and 20% were used to establish core collection. 13 traitswere compared between 3 core collections and entire collection in order to test the validity
of p rimary core collections. The results showed that the means of β - carotene content, drymatter content and vitamin C contentwere significant between the p rimary core collections and the entire collection, while the ratios of phenotype retained of 4 quantitative traitswere high. Variances of phenotype frequency of 9 qualitative traits were not significant between the primary core collections and the entire collection while the ratios of phenotype retained were 100%. With samp ling p roportion reduced, the number of regions that core collection distributed decreased. 8 regionswere reduced and germplasm proportion from the main regionswas reduced from 50% to 35% between 10% core collection and the entire. 15% - 20% could be regarded as the optimal proportion for establishing Chinese traditional carrot germplasm core collection.

Key words: Carrot, Germplasm, Landlord species, Core collection