CHARACTERISTICS OF ANATOMICAL AND MOLECULAR MARKER trnH-psbA IN IDENTIFICATION OF YELLOW CAMELLIA SPECIES IN THAI NGUYEN

Abstract

Camellia sp. is rare and a valuable nutritious drink and medicinal herb. It has been considered a high economic plant. To date, the research of this genus has only been carried out on a few species, with the main focus on morphology but some camellia species have many similar morphological characteristics, so they are easily influenced and inaccurate. Therefore, there is a need to research the gene's characteristics to improve efficiency to preserve precious genetic resources. This study was conducted to analyze morphological and molecular characteristics for species identification purposes and to provide more information about a chloroplast DNA barcode on the subject of Camellia, serving species identification service to improve the efficiency and conservation of the rare and precious Camellia species in Vietnam. The results of the study have described in detail the anatomical characteristics of the stem, leaf, and petiole. Using the trnH-psbA sequence analyzing method, the sequence of the trnH-psbA gene has a size of 396 nucleotides. trnH-psbA zone similarity index on the nucleotide sequence of yellow flower tea sample compared to 10 trnH-psbA sequences on GenBank varies between 97.51% to 99.49%. As such, the trnH-psbA sequence of the yellow flower tea sample is 99.49% similar to that of Camellia tamdaoensis coded as NC 069227.1.