Abstract
We developed three microsatellite markers to aid in the determination of genetic diversity and pollen flow in natural populations of a threatened perennial herb, Primula sieboldii. We determined the genotype of 52 genets in the University Forest of the University of Tsukuba, located on Mt. Yatsugatake in Nagano Prefecture, Japan. The markers were highly polymorphic; the observed number of alleles and heterozygosity per locus were 8-12 and 0.77-0.94, respectively. The combination of these three microsatellite markers and seven markers developed by Isagi et al. (2001) resulted in a probability of paternity exclusion of 0.997, and the probability of assigning a false paternal candidate by chance was improved from 84% to 7%. Therefore, the markers described here will be useful to reveal pollen flow in natural populations of P. sieboldii.
