Format: ORAL

Peter M. Hollingsworth1, Wu Huang1, Cornelia Simon-Nutbrown1, Flavia Pezzini1, Li De-Zhu2, Alex D. Twyford3

1 Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK 2 Kunming Institute of Botany Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, China 3 University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

Accurate and rapid identification of plant species is of fundamental importance for understanding global biodiversity, monitoring change, and managing biodiversity. Yet plant species identification can be challenging in many situations. To address this challenge, a substantial body of data has been generated using standard plant barcodes such as rbcL, matK, trnH-psbA and ITS for telling plant species apart. These barcode markers are useful for many applications, but do not provide universal species-level discrimination. There is thus considerable interest in developing new standardised plant barcoding methods. In this presentation we (1) review the strengths and limitations of the standard barcoding approach; (2) explore the potential for gains in discriminatory power by using complete plastid genomes as plant barcodes; and (3) explore recent work considering options for utilisation of nuclear loci for plant DNA barcoding. In the exploration of nuclear loci for species identification we will cover the frequency with which plant species resolve as monophyletic based on studies to-date, the number of randomly selected nuclear loci required to give maximal species discrimination, and whether there are individual loci that show any exceptional species discrimination performance. We will conclude by outlining a roadmap for further developing nuclear DNA barcoding approaches for plants.