Assessment of DNA Barcoding for the Identification of Chenopodium murale L. (Chenopodiaceae)

Chenopodium murale L. (Chenopodiaceae) is an erect annual herbaceous weed. This species is a threat for ecosystems worldwide as this annual-weed affects the growth and development of other plants by reducing the biological nitrogen-fixing ability. We evaluated the barcoding genes of the plastid region of C. murale [rbcL (Ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase) and matK (Maturase K)] for the success of PCR amplification, the differential inter-specific divergences and the ability of a single gene or combination of rbcL and matK genes to discriminate C. murale as individual species. Online nucleotide database-search using individually produced sequences of rbcL and matK gene of the plastid region primarily identified the specimen as C. murale with 100% sequence similarity. The single gene matK showed better resolution of the tree compared with the other phylogenetic-trees that were inferred from the single rbcL gene sequence or the combination of sequences of rbcL and matK. We found that single gene sequence of matK had high discrimination efficiency for the identification of the species C. murale as well as for the other 11 species (C. album, C. ambrosioides, C. bonus-henricus, C. ficifolium, C. foliosum, C. glaucum, C. polyspermum, C. rubrum, C. simplex, C. urbicum & C. vulvaria) under the genus Chenopodium.