Assessment of morphological and genetic variability in chosen Nepeta accessions
Abstract
The aim of this study was to determine the morphological and genetic variability of
four Nepeta genotypes: N. cataria var. citriodora, N. × faassenii, N. mussinii, and N. nuda
from the Collection of Medical Plants in Dołuje, Vegetable Faculty, Agricultural University
of Szczecin, Poland. Morphological variation among the examined catnip forms was
determined using biometric measurements which included the plants height, the width of
a leaf pair, the length and width of a leaf blade, the length of an inflorescence, the weights
of fresh and dried green parts and the essential oils content. The DNA polymorphism within
microsatellite sequences was determined using the ISSR-PCR technique. The conducted
biometric measurements proved that the examined Nepeta plants differed significantly
in all analysed features. Twenty microsatellite primers were used in ISSR reactions; clear
products were generated in reactions with six of them. In general, 72 loci were amplified
(110 amplicons); five of them (7%) turned out to be monomorphic, 20 (28%) polymorphic
and 47 (65%) were specific for the examined accessions. Unique loci were amplified for each
examined Nepeta genotype. A phylogenetic tree was constructed on the basis of a UPGMA
cluster algorithm. It consisted of one similarity group ‘a’, in which N. × faassenii, N. mussinii
and N. nuda were included.