Evaluation and Selection of Excellent Provenances of Eleutherococcus senticosus

Eleutherococcus senticosus is a medicinal plant with prominent potential for pharmaceutical preparation that is naturally distributed in Northeast China. Its dried roots, stems, and fruits can be used as herbal medicine with anti-aging, anti-fatigue, anti-inflammatory, and other health benefits. With the continuous increasing of E. senticosus planting areas, some problems, such as a reduction in growth rate, fruit yield, and medicinal substances content, have become serious restricting factors for the long-term stable development of the E. senticosus industry. Therefore, the screening and selection of superior provenances, families or clones with high growth rates and high contents of medicinal substances, is urgent. In this study, 13 provenances of E. senticosus were analyzed and evaluated for growth, leaf, photosynthetic, and medicinal traits. The results showed that the majority of traits exhibited highly significant differences (p < 0.01) among provenances. The phenotypic coefficient of the variation of each trait ranged from 4.8% for leaf water content to 70.9% for total flavonoid content. The narrow-sense heritability of each trait ranged from 0.20 ± 0.23 for WUE to 0.39 ± 0.14 for DB. The variance component of all traits reached a high level, with a range of 62.9% (DB) to 99.6% (SC). The correlation analysis showed significant positive correlations between tree height, total flavonoid content, and syringin content. A multi-trait comprehensive evaluation approach enabled the selection of two provenances with 10% acceptance rate (XQ and QY). The subsequent genetic gains for tree height, total flavonoid content, and syringin content were 1.7%, 9.2%, and 20.1%, respectively. In conclusion, the present study provides a fundamental basis for the cultivation and promotion of the superior materials of E. senticosus.