Panneerselvam Krishnamurthy¹, Chigen Tsukamoto², Seung Hwan Yang³, Gyuhwa Chung^{1,* 1}Department of Biotechnology, Chonnam National University, Yeosu, Chonnam 550-749, Korea, ²Department of Applied Biological Chemistry, Iwate University, Morioka, Iwate 020-8550, Japan, ³Center for Nutraceutical and Pharmaceutical Materials, Myongji University, Cheoin-gu, Yongin, Gyeonggi 449-728, Korea

After investigating the hypocotyl saponin composition of 3,720 Korean wild soybean (Glycine soja) accessions, 11 chromatographically (TLC) distinguishable phenotypes were identified: Aa, Ab, AaBc, AbBc, Aa+α, AaBc+α, AbBc+α, AuAeBc, A0Bc-αg, A0Bc-S and A0-S. The first7 phenotypes were designated as common and the latter 4 phenotypes were designated as mutant. Among the common phenotypes, AaBc (54.0%) and Aa (34.7%) were more frequently found; AaBc+α (6.6%) and Aa+α (3.1%) were detected with less common; and Ab (0.4%), AbBc (0.5%) and AbBc+α (0.3%) were rarely detected. Diversity of saponin allele frequency (H_af) and saponin allele combination frequency (H_acf) was evaluated by Shannon-Weaver Index (H) that was geographically ranged from 0.75 to 1.04 and 0.28 to 1.25, respectively. The genetic index of Korean wild soybean was increased towards south from north and west from east regions. Our findings suggest that that the Jeollanam-do region is the primary center of diversity, Jeollabuk-do and Gyeongsangnam-do regions are the secondary center of diversity and the remaining regions (Gyeonggi-do, Gangwon-do, Chungcheongbuk-do, Chungcheongnam-do, Jeollabuk-do, Gyeongsangbuk-do and Jeju-do) are the tertiary center of diversity for Korean wild soybeans.

*Corresponding Author: chung@chonnam.ac.kr