USING MORPHOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS AND DNA trnH-psbA GENE TO IDENTIFY SPECIES Paphiopedilum gratrixianum

Abstract

Orchid species of genus Paphiopedilum are greatly attractant due to their colour variety and special flower structures. To protect them, it is essential to develop methods to identify and distinguish their characteristics, especially this genus has many species with high morphological similarities. Research on methods to identify and distinguish them is extremely necessary, especially genus Paphiopedilum with many similar species in characteristics of leaf morphology. This work focus to investigate on the morphological analysis in combination with trnH-psbA gene sequence to identify of species P. gratrixianum from Lao Cai province. The results of sequencing the trnH-psbA gene isolated from the species P. gratrixianum samples indicated a gene fragment of 691 bp in size. When comparing to the sequences on the NCBI gene bank, the trnH-psbA gene sequence of species  P. gratrixianum is similar to the same species isolated in China up to 99.32% (code MV284890.1). On the taxonomy tree basing on the trnH-psbA gene sequence, species P. gratrixianum was shown close relationship with the Vietnamese species (P. tranlianianu - MW794124.1), India endemic species (P. spicerianum - NC_502702.1) and the first recorded species in China (P. barbigerum - MN153814.1, NC_050870.1).