Abstract

Fritillaria walujewii has rather high medical value, but now it is endangered and listed in the Xinjiang red list of threatened species with third-ranking protection. To reveal the genetic diversity of the natural population in F. walujewii, 235 individuals from 18 natural populations were sequenced on three chloroplast intergenic spacers. We found that the total genetic diversity was pretty high, and there existed obvious genetic divergence among the populations which mainly due to the geographic barriers and its biological factors. Moreover, the genetic distance was significantly correlated with the geographic distance. Among all the populations, the two populations from Zhaosu and Xinyuan Counties harbored the highest genetic diversity. The high extinct risk of F. walujewii imply that we should conduct active protection measures, especially on the populations with higher genetic diversity in Zhaosu and Xinyuan Counties.