Abstract
Piper species are used for spices, in traditional and processed forms of medicines, in cosmetic compounds, in cultural activities and insecticides. Here barcode analysis was performed for identification of plant parts, young plants and modified forms of plants. Thirty-six Piper species were collected and the three barcode regions, matK, rbcL and psbA-trnH spacer, were amplified, sequenced and aligned to determine their genetic distances. For intraspecific genetic distances, the most effective values for the species identification ranged from no difference to very low distance values. However, Piper betle had the highest values at 0.386 for the matK region. This finding may be due to Piper betle being an economic and cultivated species, and thus is supported with growth factors, which may have affected its genetic distance. The interspecific genetic distances that were most effective for identification of different species were from the matK region and ranged from a low of 0.002 in 27 paired species to a high of 0.486. Eight species pairs, Piper kraense and Piper dominantinervium, Piper magnibaccum and Piper kraense, Piper phuwuaense and Piper dominantinervium, Piper phuwuaense and Piper kraense, Piper pilobracteatum and Piper dominantinervium, Piper pilobracteatum and Piper kraense, Piper pilobracteatum and Piper phuwuaense and Piper sylvestre and Piper polysyphonum, that presented a genetic distance of 0.000 and were identified by independently using each of the other two regions. Concisely, these three barcode regions are powerful for further efficient identification of the 36 Piper species.
Highlights
Plants in the genus Piper have been used since prehistoric times for a variety of human activities
Because most of the Piper species that we investigated were wild, it was difficult to collect a sufficient amount of samples from all 36 Piper species to adequately construct barcodes
P. betle, P. retrofractum, P. nigrum and P. sarmentosum are economic and cultivated species, and all of these species are used as ingredients in the products mentioned above in the introduction
Summary
Plants in the genus Piper have been used since prehistoric times for a variety of human activities They are used as spices, in traditional and processed forms of medicines, in cosmetic compounds, in cultural activities and as insecticides (Chaveerach et al 2006a, Scott et al 2008, Fan et al 2011). The betel plant, is one of the most important and well-known species of the genus. It contains important chemical substances, such as chavicol, cineol and eugenol, used in essential oils, medicines and insecticides (Yusoff et al 2005, Misra et al 2009). The method was developed in 2003 (Hebert et al 2003) It principally uses short DNA sequences from appropriate genome regions for the identification of organisms. Hebert et al (2004) used the mitochondrially encoded cytochrome c oxidase I (MT-CO1) to discriminate between bird species. Zhang and Hanner (2012) used sequences of MT-CO1, 16s RNA, MT-CYB and RNA 18s in 242 species of fish and in 11 Epinephelus species
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