Identification of Treculia africana L. varieties using Internal Transcribed Spacer Region 1 (ITS 1) and Internal Transcribed Spacer Region 2 (ITS 2) DNA barcodes 

Abstract

<title>Abstract</title> Background <italic>Treculia africana</italic> L. (African breadfruit), is an underutilized, underexploited, and endangered species of southern Nigeria. It has been identified and classified using anatomical features, but there is insufficient information on its molecular identification and classification. There is a need to complement the morphological identification of the plant with molecular methods. Results To identify 86 accessions of <italic>Treculia africana</italic> var <italic>inversa</italic> and <italic>Treculia africana</italic> var <italic>africana</italic> , Internal Transcribed Spacer Region ITS-2 and Internal Transcribed Spacer Region lTS- 1 DNA barcodes were used. In this study, we observed that to determine the homology between sequences obtained and the Genbank database, the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) basic alignment search tool (BLAST) did not reveal any match. An alignment of the accessions with KU855474.1 <italic>Artocarpus altilis</italic> showed similarities via molecular evolutionary genetic analysis (mega 11). Conclusions The alignment revealed that the <italic>Treculia</italic> accessions were related and genetically similar to <italic>Artocarpus</italic> species, members of the Moraceae family, indicating that the accessions belong to the same family. However, the two varieties of <italic>Treculia</italic> could not be distinguished with ITS Barcodes. The molecular data of <italic>Treculia</italic> species need to be populated on the gene bank to support future molecular studies and also a combination of DNA barcodes is recommended for identification purposes.