A STUDY ON THE CORRETATION BETWEEN DNA MARKERS AND MORPHOLOGY CHARACTERISTICS FOR IDENTIFICATION OF Paphiopedilum helenae Aver. OF VIET NAM

Abstract

Paphiopedilum orchids are loved for their beautiful flowers but are now increasingly depleted in the wild due to over-exploitation. To support bio conservation, not only the establishment of regulations prohibiting exploitation and trade it is necessary to prioritize the development of identification and phylogenetic analysis because species of the Paphiopedilum genus have similar morphology, difficult to distinguish when the plant is small or not yet flowering. This study presents the results of correlation analysis between morphological features and markers trnH-psbA and ITS in the identification and taxonomy of Paphiopedilum helenae Aver. originated in Thai Nguyen, Vietnam. The results showed that the identification of Helen's orchid by two markers trnH-psbA and ITS was completely consistent with the comparative morphological method. the DNA barcoding of Paphiopedilum helenae has very high similarity with those in two species Paphiopedilum tranlienianum and Paphiopedilum barbigerum (up to 99.98%). The molecular phylogeny tree was established by the MEGAX and evolutionary analysis was taken through the Maximum Likelihood method also shows the close relationship of three studied species.The combination of trnH-psbA and ITS markers is a candidate for DNA barcoding for rapid identification of Paphiopedilum helenae Aver.