Genetic relationship and source species identification of 58 Qi-Nan germplasms of Aquilaria species in China that easily form agarwood

Yong Kang; Peiwei Liu; Feifei Lv; Yuxiu Zhang; Yun Yang; Jianhe Wei

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0270167

Genetic relationship and source species identification of 58 Qi-Nan germplasms of Aquilaria species in China that easily form agarwood

PLoS One. 2022 Jun 16;17(6):e0270167. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0270167. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Yong Kang¹, Peiwei Liu¹, Feifei Lv¹, Yuxiu Zhang¹, Yun Yang¹, Jianhe Wei^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Hainan Provincial Key Laboratory of Resources Conservation and Development of Southern Medicine & Key Laboratory of State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine for Agarwood Sustainable Utilization, Hainan Branch of the Institute of Medicinal Plant Development, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, Haikou, China.
² Key Laboratory of Bioactive Substances and Resources Utilization of Chinese Herbal Medicine, Ministry of Education & National Engineering Laboratory for Breeding of Endangered Medicinal Materials, Institute of Medicinal Plant Development, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, Beijing, China.

Abstract

Recently, Qi-Nan germplasm, the germplasm of Aquilaria species that easily forms agarwood, has been widely cultivated in Guangdong and Hainan Provinces in China. Since the morphological characteristics of Qi-Nan germplasm are similar to those of Aquilaria species and germplasm is bred by grafting, it is difficult to determine the source species of this germplasm by traditional taxonomic characteristics. In this study, we performed a DNA barcoding analysis of 58 major Qi-Nan germplasms as well as Aquilaria sinensis, A. yunnanensis, A. crassna, A. malaccensis and A. hirta with 5 primers (nuclear gene internal transcribed spacer 2 (ITS2) and the chloroplast genes matK, trnH-psbA, rbcL and trnL-trnF). This field survey in the Qi-Nan germplasm plantations in Guangdong and Hainan Provinces aimed to accurately identify the source species of Qi-Nan germplasm. According to the results, ITS2 and matK showed the most variability and the highest divergence at all genetic distances. This ITS2+matK combination, screened for with TaxonDNA analysis, showed the highest success rate in species identification of the Qi-Nan germplasm. Clustering in the phylogenetic trees constructed with Bayesian inference and maximum likelihood indicated that the Qi-Nan germplasm was most closely related to A. sinensis and more distantly related to A. yunnanensis, A. crassna, A. malaccensis and A. hirta. Therefore, this study determined that the source species of the Qi-Nan germplasm is A. sinensis.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Bayes Theorem
China
DNA Barcoding, Taxonomic / methods
DNA, Plant / genetics
Phylogeny
Plant Breeding*
Thymelaeaceae* / genetics

Substances

DNA, Plant

Grants and funding

This work was supported by National Key Research and Development Program of China (2018YFC1706400), General project of Hainan Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (322MS144), CAMS Innovation Fund for Medical Sciences (2021-I2M-1-032) and Advanced talents project of Hainan Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (321RC661). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.