2019 ASHS Annual Conference

The Solanaceae family is one of the major groups of angiosperms, with more than 2,000 species and approximately 100 genera. This family contains species with agricultural and economical importance worldwide such as potatoes, eggplants, tomatoes and peppers. In Puerto Rico we have approximately 46 species of Solanaceae including eggplants (solanum melongena), peppers (Capsicum sp.) and six endemics: Brunfelsia densifolia, Brunfelsia lactea, Brunfelsia portoricensis, Goetzea elegans, Solanum ensifolium and Solanum woodburyi. The endemic species are threatened and endangered in the wild due to reduction in their habitat caused by land loss. Therefore, our objective is to prove if DNA Barcoding can be used as a rapid and easy way to identify these species and assess the relationship between Solanaceae species in Puerto Rico. To accomplish our objectives, two chloroplastic and a nuclear region called DNA barcodes were amplified: psbA-trnH, Matk and ITS respectively. A total of 76% of the Puerto Rico Solanaceae had been analyzed. We have found that the pairwise distance range was 0.000-0.017, 0.000-0.054, and 0.007-0.088 for matK, psbA-trnH and ITS respectively. The outgroup pairwise distance range was 0.166-0.296, 0.350-0.670, and 0.172-0.467 for matK, psbA-trnH and ITS, respectively. In all three markers, the genus that showed the highest pairwise distance between its species was Solanum genus, while the genus that display the least was Capsicum with 0.000. Phylogenetic trees of concatenated sequences were generated from species of this study and from NCBI database to identify species. This technique can be used to identify species with two or three combinations of barcodes depending on the species. Also, this is the first study to include the endemic Solanum woodburyi in a molecular analysis and was found to have a close relationship with Solanum ensifolium and Solanum bahamense. Overall, DNA barcoding can be used to identify Solanacea effectively with exception of the Capsicum genera.