Species diversity of the Cereus genus (Cactaceae) in Brazilian biomes evaluated by molecular marker with reproducibility and speed in carrying out experiments

Abstract

Abstract Background In the last two decades, molecular markers have been used as an additional tool to characterize and identify cactus species of the Cereus genus. The hypothesis in the present study is that inter simple sequence repeats of DNA (ISSR) may contribute to reveal the molecular divergence at DNA level between Cereus plants from different Brazilian biomes. Methods and Results Polymorphisms in ISSRs were used as molecular markers to evaluate genetic diversity and divergence among Cereus plants in the Atlantic Forest, Pampa, Cerrado, Caatinga, Amazon Forest, and Pantanal biomes cultivated in in the south (S), southeast (SE), Midwest (MW), north (NO) and northeast (NE) of Brazil. The polymorphism rates were higher in plants from the S and the highest genetic divergences were observed between plants from MW and NE, S and MW and S and NE regions. Plants from the MW in the Pantanal biome were the most divergent. The 198 ISSR segments indicated occurrence of only a species of Cereus in the south. Conclusion ISSR markers showed high reproducibility, ease, and rapidity in carrying out the experiments and low cost compared to SSR markers and was useful to group plants of Cereus from the same biome and to discriminate plants from different biomes.