Development of highly polymorphic genomic microsatellite markers and their application to gene flow in a natural population of Abies firma

The momi fir (Abies firma) has been targeted as a species for genetic resource conservation because of the recent decline in its natural populations. Additional molecular marker resources are needed to examine gene flow to understand the genetic dynamics of each population. We developed 15 genomic microsatellite (SSR) markers for A. firma and applied them to separate biparentage assignments of dispersed seeds in a natural population by assaying embryos and megagametophytes. The 15 markers were polymorphic, with the expected heterozygosity averaging greater than 0.74. Separate biparentage analysis, using the seven selected effective markers, was successful to assign paternal and maternal trees separately and thus estimate the paternal and maternal immigrant gene flow from nearby populations. The newly developed genomic SSR markers in the present study, by constructing a marker set together with previously developed markers, will provide higher discriminatory power for parentage analysis and should be useful for estimating gene flow for ongoing conservation genetics studies of A. firma.