Shunquan Lin

Variation in contents of total phenolics and flavonoids and antioxidant activities in the leaves of 11 Eriobotrya species.

Eriobotrya plants are known to have significant amounts of phenolics and flavonoids, and exhibit a strong antioxidant activity. Experiments were conducted to examine variation in the contents of total phenolics and flavonoids, and antioxidant activities in the leaves of 11 Eriobotrya species (Tibet loquat, Daduhe loquat, Hengchun loquat, Taiwan loquat, Oak leaf loquat, Bengal loquat, Fragrant loquat, Guangxi loquat, Obovate loquat, Big flower loquat, and common loquat, the last species include two materials, one is a cultivar ‘Zaozhong 6’, another is a wild tree). In these species, ‘Zaozhong 6′ loquat is a cultivar. The leaf extracts of ‘Tibet’, ‘Obovate’, ‘Taiwan’, ‘Bengal’ and ‘Hengchun’ loquats exhibited significantly higher contents of total flavonoids and total phenolics, compared with those of other species. Of these 11 species, the highest contents of total phenolics and total flavonoids were observed in ‘Tibet’ and ‘Obovatae’ loquats, respectively. The significantly stronger antioxidant abilities assessed by the DPPH radical scavenging activity and reducing power were obtained in the leaf extracts of ‘Taiwan’, ‘Tibet’, ‘Bengal’, ‘Oak leaf’, ‘Hengchun’ and ‘Obovate’ loquats, compared with the other species. In addition, significant correlations were found between the contents of total phenolics or flavonoids and DPPH radical scavenging activity/reducing power. This work indicates that the leaf extracts of the wild Eriobotrya species, ‘Tibet’, ‘Obovatae’, ‘Taiwan’, ‘Bengal’, ‘Oak leaf’ and ‘Hengchun’ loquats, exhibited significantly higher levels of total phenolics and flavonoids, and significantly stronger antioxidant activities, compared with the cultivated species, ‘Zaozhong 6′ loquat, which suggests that these wild species have a better utilization value.

Footprints of domestication revealed by RAD-tag resequencing in loquat: SNP data reveals a non-significant domestication bottleneck and a single domestication event

BackgroundThe process of crop domestication has long been a major area of research to gain insights into the history of human civilization and to understand the process of evolution. Loquat (Eriobotrya japonica Lindl.) is one of the typical subtropical fruit trees, which was domesticated in China at least 2000 years ago. In the present study, we re-sequenced the genome of nine wild loquat accessions collected from wide geographical range and 10 representative cultivated loquat cultivars by using RAD-tag tacit to exploit the molecular footprints of domestication.ResultsWe obtained 26.4 Gb clean sequencing data from 19 loquat accessions, with an average of 32.64 M reads per genotype. We identified more than 80,000 SNPs distributed throughout the loquat genome. The SNP density and numbers were slightly higher in the wild loquat populations than that in the cultivated populations. All cultivars were clustered together by structure, phylogenetic and PCA analyses.ConclusionThe modern loquat cultivars have experienced a non-significant genetic bottleneck during domestication, and originated from a single domesticated event. Moreover, our study revealed that Hubei province of China is probably the origin center of cultivated loquat.

Genetic relationships among Eriobotrya species revealed by genome-wide RAD sequence data

Abstract Restriction site‐associated DNA sequencing (RAD‐seq) was used to illuminate the genetic relationships among Eriobotrya species. The raw data were filtered, and 221 million clean reads were used for further analysis. A total of 1,983,332 SNPs were obtained from 23 Eriobotrya species and two relative genera. We obtained similar results by neighbor‐joining and maximum likelihood phylogenetic trees. All Eriobotrya plants grouped together into a big clade, and two out‐groups clustered together into a single or separate clade. Chinese and Vietnam accessions were distributed throughout the dendrogram. There was nonsignificant correlation between genotype and geographical distance. However, clustering results were correlated with leaf size to some extent. The Eriobotrya species could be divided into following three groups based on leaf size and phylogenetic analysis: group A and group B comprised of small leaves with <10 cm length except E. stipularis (16.76 cm), and group C can be further divided into two subgroups, which contained medium‐size leaves with a leaf length ranged from 10 to 20 cm and a leaf length bigger than 20 cm.