The use of molecular techniques to resolve relationships among traditional weaving cultivars of Phormium

Molecular techniques - sequencing of the nuclear internal transcribed spacer region (ITS), and fingerprinting of amplified fragment length polymorphisms (AFLP) and intersimple sequence repeats (ISSR) - were investigated for their potential to characterise genetic variation in harakeke (Phormium spp., family Hemerocallidaceae) in New Zealand. ITS showed no variation between species of Phormium. However, both AFLP and ISSR identified genome regions that were polymorphic among intraspecific accessions of Phormium obtained from the National New Zealand Flax Collection. When used as a direct sequencing marker, one AFLP fragment distinguished two major groups of nuclear haplotypes. The partitioning of taxa into these groups was supported by phylogenetic analysis of ISSR fingerprinting profiles. Split decomposition, a network-building technique, was shown to be useful in representing the sorts of relationships present in this study of intraspecific variation. Further sampling of natural populations is required to understand the origins and present-day distributions of these accessions; however, the present results show the usefulness of these methods for addressing such ethnobotanic questions.