Meanwhile, according to the results of nested ANOVA (Table 4), there were highly significant differences in all indicators among A. truncatum populations, with the greatest variability in seed kernel oil content; only seed kernel oil content and palmitic acid showed highly significant differences among A. truncatum populations, while stearic acid, oleic acid, and linoleic acid showed significant differences, and -linolenic acid showed no significant differences. The results showed that, for A. truncatum , under different habitat conditions, the oil content of seed kernels and major fatty acid fractions among M. metabolica populations were richly variable and genetically unstable; under similar habitat conditions, the differences in A. truncatum ’s major fatty acid fractions were small, and the degree of variation was not rich enough, but A. truncatum ’s oil content of seed kernels and palmitic acid content showed highly similitude. However, independent of habitat similarities, the oil content and palmitic acid content of A. truncatum seed kernels exhibited highly significant variances within and among populations, indicating that these two metrics are highly variable.
Table 4. Variance analysis of seed kernel oil content and main fatty acid components in interpopulation and intra-population of Acer truncatum