PJB-2023-487
Assessment of morphological characteristics and molecular evolutionary relationships in parasitic species of the Loranthaceae family
Widad Saleem Aljuhani and Noha Turki Althagafi
Abstract
The Loranthaceae family is considered parasitic, and mistletoe negatively affects the growth and productivity of host trees. There are four genera and six species of Loranthaceae that grow naturally in Saudi Arabia. It grows on fruit trees and causes damage, and these species have not received sufficient morphological or molecular study. This work aims to evaluate the importance of morphological traits and the phylogenetic relationships between Loranthaceae species. Eleven morphological characteristics of leaves, flowers and fruit were investigated in the study samples. The discrimination power of these characteristics was evaluated using principal component analysis (PCA), hierarchical clustering analysis (HC)A, and analysis of variance (ANOVA). On the other hand, molecular experiments included extracting the DNA of the samples and amplification using different chloroplast regions cpDNA (rbcL, matK, and trnL–trnF), as well as nuclear regions nrDNA (ITS1 and ITS2). The results of DNA sequences of this study and available sequences of Loranthaceae species in GenBank were used to reconstruct the phylogenetic trees and investigate the genetic relationships. The morphological characteristics that were used in this study, especially "Lamina width, lamina area, and lamina pedicel length", were able to discriminate between Loranthaceae species and classify species within clusters based on their affiliation to subtribes Emelianthinae and Tapinanthinae. According to the current results, the maximum parsimony (MP) phylogenetic tree based on matK and rbcL genes has well-supported branch nodes compared to other genes, especially for tribe Lorantheae. Available morphological and molecular data in these studies are useful in determining the parasitic plants and will facilitate resistance efforts
To Cite this article:
Aljuhani, W.S. and N.T. Althagafi. 2025. Assessment of morphological characteristics and molecular evolutionary relationships in parasitic species of the Loranthaceae family. Pak. J. Bot., 57(1): DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.30848/PJB2025-1(6)
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