DNA barcoding of selected Zingiberaceae species from North-East India

Tripura, located in the sub-Himalayan region of North-East India (NEI), is a part of one of the global biodiversity hotspots. Its diverse flora includes many economically important species of Zingiberaceae, which are endemic to forests of NEI regions. However, little information is available on the DNA barcoding of plants, especially from NEI regions. Here, we evaluated the efficacy of four candidate barcoding loci on thirteen species belonging to four genera of Zingiberaceae. The success rate for PCR amplification and DNA sequencing was 100% for ycf1b, rbcL, ITS and ITS2. Data indicated that the conserved sites were highest in ycf1b and the least in ITS. Conversely, ITS revealed greater interspecific and intraspecific variations compared to the other loci. Interestingly, the mean interspecific divergence of ycf1b was more than the intraspecific divergence with the presence of a barcode gap and it could separate all the samples in a species-specific manner in the single-locus tree-based analysis. On the other hand, rbcL, ITS and ITS2 loci failed to resolve all these species clearly. Overall, our findings indicated that ycf1b could be used as a prospective DNA barcode for accurate identification of the plant species of Zingiberaceae.