Abstract
Matricaria chamomilla L. (chamomile, Asteraceae) (GRIN, The Plant List 2013) has a long history of usage in traditional herbal medicine and is still today amongst the most important medicinal plants. Despite this importance, genetic diversity of cultivated and wild germplasm of M. chamomilla was rarely investigated so far. The objective of this study was to estimate the mitochondrial (mt) diversity of various cultivated M. chamomilla genotypes by determining point mutations in the mt genome. 89 SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms) were identified in the next generation sequencing data of 33 genotypes from 11 di- and tetraploid chamomile accessions representing a sequence diversity of 0.32 SNPs/kb. Based on the SNP analysis 19 mitochondrial haplotypes (mitotypes) could be specified with genetic distances ranging between 0.011 and 0.851. The examined mt variability within the accessions was higher than expected; only one monomorphic accession (variety ‘Camoflora’) was identified. Diploid accessions exhibited with 1.9 mitotypes per accession a higher variability than tetraploid accessions with a ratio of 1.3. Although some of the mitotypes were distributed over different accessions, identical mitotypes within di- and tetraploid accessions could not be determined. Furthermore, the mitotypes did not correspond to the geographical origin of the accessions. Although not the whole mt genome could be assembled in this study, the substitutions identified represent a valuable tool for further investigations of maternal phylogenetic relationships within M. chamomilla.
Highlights
IntroductionMatricariae flos (flowers from Matricaria chamomilla L., common name chamomile, Asteraceae) (GRIN, The Plant List 2013) is one of the most important medicinal plant raw materials with numerous applications in the pharmaceutical and cosmetic area
Matricariae flos (GRIN, The Plant List 2013) is one of the most important medicinal plant raw materials with numerous applications in the pharmaceutical and cosmetic area
Mitochondrial DNA was extracted according to the protocol of Triboush et al (1998) with minor modifications. 1 g of very young leaves and apical shoot tips were ground in 10 ml of the recommended prechilled buffer STE with mortar and pistil using autoclaved sea sand
Summary
Matricariae flos (flowers from Matricaria chamomilla L., common name chamomile, Asteraceae) (GRIN, The Plant List 2013) is one of the most important medicinal plant raw materials with numerous applications in the pharmaceutical and cosmetic area. M. chamomilla is mainly outbreeding and originally diploid with tetraploid varieties induced by artificial polyploidisation to obtain higher crop yields due to larger flower heads or to obtain higher contents of essential oils or medicinally active compounds (Das 2014). Another aspect for the implementation of tetraploid varieties was to avoid crossings between cultivated and wild chamomile plants (Das 2014). Accessions of both ploidy levels are cultivated and most of them still exhibit high phenotypic variability (Das 2014; Plescher and Sonnenschein 2013)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
