Morphological and molecular characterization of two species of genus Ageratum.

Background: The species of genus Ageratum (family Asteraceae) are distributed in various parts of the world. Ageratum conyzoides and A. houstonianum are the most commonly occurring species in India. These species are quite similar in their morphology thus creating a challenge in identification during the field survey and taxonomic validation. The accurate identification of the species is highly significant especially when those are of medicinal interest. To overcome the barriers in morphological based identification, DNA barcoding has been employed during the present investigation.

Methods And Results: Morphological and DNA barcodes matK and ITS genes, were employed to differentiate between Ageratum conyzoides and A. houstonianum. The obtained matK and ITS gene sequences were submitted to GenBank and BOLD system to obtain accession numbers. The DNA sequences were aligned with database sequences using BLAST and phylogenetic trees were constructed through neighbor-joining algorithm in MEGA 11 software. The distinguish features of A. conyzoides include ovate to elliptic-oblong leaves with a cuneate base and inflorescence heads forming domed to flat-topped clusters. However, A. houstonianum has triangular to ovate leaves with a cordate to truncate base, cymose clusters in the inflorescence and stipulate glandular involucre bracts. The matK gene has shown the highest identity percentages (100%) for A. houstonianum and 99.87% for A. conyzoides. The phylogenetic tree analysis has demonstrated a close association of A. conyzoides and A. houstonianum with their respective species, supported by bootstrap values in the matK and ITS trees.

Conclusion: This study revealed that morphological and molecular data can be successfully utilized in the identification of A. conyzoides and A. houstonianum. The matK and ITS barcodes provide promising results in the identification of Ageratum species, with their phylogeny supporting classification within the family asteraceae.