Use of rbcL and ITS2 for DNA barcoding and identification of Solanaceae plants in hilly state of Mizoram, India

Abstract

Solanaceae is an important angiosperm family having high economic and commercial importance being used as sources of food, spice, and medicine. The traditional method of plant identification using morphological characters often leads to inaccurate and unreliable results because of genetic and environmental factors. In Solanaceae family, highly similar morphological traits among the species also make the identification difficult. The present study evaluated the viability of employing DNA barcodes, ITS2 and rbcL regions to identify Solanaceae species. DNA barcoding is a rapid and reliable tool to identify and study the genetic relationship among plants and animals. The present study for the first time was conducted during 2017 to 2019 at the Department of Botany, Mizoram University to analyze the applicability of two DNA regions-rbcL (Ribulosebisphosphate Carboxylases) and ITS2 (Internal Transcribed Spacer gene), as the barcodes for the identification of Solanaceae species of Mizoram, India. Fifteen Solanaceae species were analyzed at ITS2 and rbcL regions. The success rates of PCR amplification and sequencing of ITS2 and rbcL were 100% and MEGA 7.0 was used to align the sequences and to compute genetic distances. The results from BLAST and nearest-distance methods revealed that ITS2 and rbcL can be used to identify all the studied species and high divergences at taxonomic levels were also found using K2P (Kimura 2-parameter) model. Hence, our study reveals that rbcL and ITS2 regions are suitable DNA barcodes for the identification of Solanaceae species and therefore can be successfully used to monitor the adulteration of plants.