Differentiation of six Eucalyptus trees grown in Mexico by ITS and six chloroplast barcoding markers

Abstract

Abstract Different species of the genus Eucalyptus, originally native to Australia, are being cultivated in different parts of the world due to their fast growth and beneficial wood properties. In Mexico, probably up to 25 different Eucalyptus species (many of them with unknown species declaration) were introduced early in the 20th century. Many Eucalyptus species are cross compatible and information about provenances of the single eucalypt species is rare. In this study, an experimental plantation established in 1984 and located in Northeast of Mexico was chosen as example to re-assign the species name of six randomly selected Eucalyptus trees growing in this plantation. First, a phylogenetic tree was constructed from complete chloroplast sequences of 31 Eucalyptus species available in the NCBI database. The phylogenetic tree includes three of the nine Eucalyptus species known to be introduced to Mexico, namely E. camaldulensis, E. saligna and E. grandis, which belong to a clade named “Symphyomyrts”. By employing combined BLASTN and UPGMA analyses of six chloroplast (cp) regions, three of the six unknown eucalypt samples (Euc4, 5, 6) cluster together with E. microtheca and E. cladocalyx, whereas the other three (Euc1, 2, 3) were more similar to a group containing E. camaldulensis, E. grandis and E. saligna. UPGMA analysis of the ITS region overall shows the same rough clustering, but provide more detailed information for two samples being most likely assigned to E. camaldulensis.