Table 1 General characteristics of cultivar KU50, Arg7 and wild ancestor W14 used for mining and expression analysis of miRNAs and their target genes

Latin name

M. esculenta Crantz

M. esculenta. ssp. flabellifolia

Code in Chinese cassava germplasm garden

MS000168/MS000580

MS000581

Collection site and time

Thailand , 2002/CIAT, Columbia, 2007-01-20

CIAT, Columbia, 2004-07-30

Number of fruits

few

many

Propagation method

stems

seeds

Photosynthetic efficiency (μmol/m²/s)

15.9–38.7

14.6–24.2

Storage root yield (kg/plant/yr)

3.0–10.0

0.5–1.0

Starch content of root (%)

28.0–32.0

3.0–5.0