USING MORPHOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS AND DNA BARCODE TO IDENTIFY THE Paphiopedilum emersonii

Abstract

Orchid genus Paphiopedilum is one of the special genus of the orchid family having beautiful flowers, vibrant colors and a unique structure. Recently, this orchid genus is  seriously threatened due to overexploitation causing some of them to be  endangered. About 22 specieses of Paphiopedilum have been discovered in Vietnam. Of which, many specieses are similar in leaf characteristics causing challenges and confusion for classification by morphological methods. Therefore, development of potential methods to identify species of this orchid genus is essential. In this study, we provided the details in characteristics of stem and leave morphological structures as well asflowers of species P. emersonii collected from Thai Nguyen province, Vietnam. In addition, the sequence of rbcL gene was also analyzed for the tested P. Emersonii species. In this result, a  683 bp fragment of the rbcL gene  was amplified from the tested P. emersonii sample. The  rbcL nucleotide sequence analysis using the BLAST software in the NCBI indicated that this orchid sample is belong to the Paphiopedilum genus. The similarity in the rbcL nucleotide sequences of this sample as compared to some species in genus Paphiopedilum ranged from 99.15% to 99.98% (GenBank: NC_045278.1, KT388109.1, NC_041309.1, MK161066.1, MF983795.1, KJ524105.1, AB176547.1, JQ182212.1, JN181467.1, JN181466.1, JN181465.1, JQ182209.1, JN181468.1, AF074209.1). According to the dendrogram tree of a the rbcL gene sequences, P. emersonii species was closely related to P. delenatii species.