Exploring parthenium weed biotypes by chloroplast DNA barcode analysis

Background:Parthenium weed (Parthenium hysterophorus\ua0L.) is an invasive weed that has invaded vast regions of Pakistan in a relatively very short period of a decade or two, threatening the crop fields of the agrarian fed country.\ua0Parthenium hysterophorus\ua0L. is native of central South America and Gulf of Mexico, has now turned out to be a weed of global significance due to its alarming invasions and profuse spread in approximately all parts of the world. Its invasion is probably due to the contamination of its seeds in the imported grains from other countries of the world.Objective:During comprehensive sampling from Pakistan and Australia, it was observed that parthenium weed accessions exhibited several distinct morphological features present at different geographical regions. Therefore this study focuses on the use of plastid DNA barcodes (psbA-trnH) to evaluate the extent of variations in nucleotide sequences between the parthenium weed sampled accessions.Methods:The variability or genetic diversity was evaluated through sequencing of the amplified products and data was subjected to phylogenetic analysis in Molecular Evolutionary Genetic Analysis (MEGA; version 6.06) software.Results:In Maximum Likelihood tree, mainly two clades with three subdivisions are evident which showed increased heterogenity. The results of sequence based markers showed 12 haplotypes of\ua0P.hysterophorus\ua0populations (having two parsimony informative sites) with 10 indels and a few SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms)

Genetic structure of invasive weed Parthenium hysterophorus in Australia and Pakistan

Understanding the patterns of genetic structure in the introduced range of invasive species can help elucidate invasion histories and levels of gene flow among populations. Parthenium weed (Parthenium hysterophorus L.; PW) is native to the Gulf of Mexico and central South America but has become globally invasive during the last three decades and little is known about the genetics of this species in its invasive range. The present study was conducted to determine the genetic structure of 95 individual samples from 11 populations (9 from Pakistan and 2 from Australia) of PW using ISSR fingerprinting. A total of 30 ISSR primers were screened; of which eight were selected due to their high polymorphism and reproducibility. In toto 147 bands were amplified, which ranged in size from 200-2000 bp; among which 97 were polymorphic. Genetic diversity within the populations both from Pakistan and Australia ranged between 0.193-0.278. Approximately 18% of genetic variation occurred among and 82% within populations. Principal Coordinate Analysis showed that within the 95 samples two groups were present: one contained samples collected mainly from Pakistan and the second group included the Australian samples along with two populations from Pakistan. Overall, there was limited gene flow among PW populations in Pakistan, although the genetic diversity within populations was high. The degree of genetic variation inferred from various population diversity measures can predict different events of founding populations, which have passed through complicated processes of invasion, experiencing genetic bottlenecks. Taken together, results showed that PW in Pakistan is genetically heterogeneous and may have been the result of multiple introductions