The innovative research employed rbcL (ribulose bisphosphate carboxylase) primers in detecting the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region on the chloroplast cpDNA of five species of the genus Rosa L., using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and phylogenetic relationship. The species are R. gallica, R. hemisphaerica, R. foetida, Rosa x damascene, and R. centifolia. The results revealed the presence of a major band (1700 bp) in all studied species. Based on a phylogenetic analysis of the rbcL gene sequence data, two major clusters were evident in the dendrogram. The species R. gallica and R. hemisphaerica have a good bootstrap value of 99%. The rest of the three species (R. centifolia, R. foetida, and Rosa x damascene) has a bootstrap value ranging between 55%–57%. The study also authenticated the species R. hemisphaerica and R. foetida were newly recorded species in the international GenBank NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information).
Rosa L. species, chloroplast DNA, identification, ITS, phylogenetic analysis, rbcL gene
Using the rbcL gene of chloroplast (DNA), the study identified five different species belonging to the genus Rosa L. (Rosaceae) grown in the Kurdistan Region, Iraq.