Three artificial gynogenetic clones of silver carp were produced for the analysis of restriction enzyme digestion patterns of ND5-ND6 region from mtDNA of the clones. It is revealed that all intraclonal individuals shared completely the same digestion patterns but among interclonal individuals did not. The three clones were mixed and cultured in a pond together for two years, and restriction endonuclease digestion patterns of ND5-ND6 were used as genetic markers to assess the growth performance of each clone.
The genomes of three groups of grass carp, namely the Xiangjiang River grass carp group （Xiangjiang group）, a one-generation artificially induced meio-gynogenetic grass carp group （meio-gynogenetic-1 group）, and a two-generation artificially induced meio-gynogenetic grass carp group （meio-gynogenetic-2 group）, were comparatively analyzed with microsatellite markers. Genetic polymorphism had been observed in the Xiangjiang group and most of the examined loci had more than two alleles. But the degree of genetic diversity was not very high. Although all the examined genetic loci in the analyzed individuals were in homozygous state, the genotypes of different individuals of the group were not identical in the meio-gynogenetic-1 group. In the meio-gynogenetic-2 group, not only the examined genetic loci of each individual were homozygous but also the genotypes of all the analyzed individuals of the group were the same. These results suggested that the examined meio-gynogenetic-2 group is a homozygous group and homozygous clone could be produced by continuous artificial induction of gynogenesis for two generations. It was found that the polymorphism existed not only at the allele level but also at the locus level; many alleles of the microsatellite loci and some of the microsatellite loci had been lost during the process of artificial gynogenesis. Therefore, both protection of the diversity of natural grass carp resource and selection of homozygous traits with desired economic genotypes are very important aspects for grass carp breeding.
