Article ID: 26070
Juncus decipiens is a wetland plant cultivated for production of tatami mats. It is widely distributed throughout Japan and continental East Asia, and the cultivars currently in production were developed by public breeding programs from locally domesticated lineages (landraces). To clarify the origins of these landraces and cultivars, we compared the genetic structure of preserved lineages and wild populations using single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) data generated by multiplexed ISSR genotyping by sequencing (MIG-seq). Our results suggest that hybridization between distinct intraspecific lineages contributed to the origin of most landraces, while landraces from Okinawa served as valuable genetic resources for modern breeding. These findings provide new insights into the domestication history of J. decipiens and the genetic basis of agronomically important traits.
