de Boer Hugo J, Ouarghidi Abderrahim, Martin Gary, Abbad Abdelaziz, Kool Anneleen
Department of Organismal Biology, Evolutionary Biology Centre, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden ; Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Leiden, The Netherlands ; Natural History Museum, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.
Faculty of Science Semlalia, Cadi Ayyad University, Marrakech, Morocco ; Global Diversity Foundation, Marrakech, Morocco.
PLoS One. 2014 Jan 8;9(1):e84291. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0084291. eCollection 2014.
The trade of plant roots as traditional medicine is an important source of income for many people around the world. Destructive harvesting practices threaten the existence of some plant species. Harvesters of medicinal roots identify the collected species according to their own folk taxonomies, but once the dried or powdered roots enter the chain of commercialization, accurate identification becomes more challenging.
A survey of morphological diversity among four root products traded in the medina of Marrakech was conducted. Fifty-one root samples were selected for molecular identification using DNA barcoding using three markers, trnH-psbA, rpoC1, and ITS. Sequences were searched using BLAST against a tailored reference database of Moroccan medicinal plants and their closest relatives submitted to NCBI GenBank.
Combining psbA-trnH, rpoC1, and ITS allowed the majority of the market samples to be identified to species level. Few of the species level barcoding identifications matched the scientific names given in the literature, including the most authoritative and widely cited pharmacopeia.
CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: The four root complexes selected from the medicinal plant products traded in Marrakech all comprise more than one species, but not those previously asserted. The findings have major implications for the monitoring of trade in endangered plant species as morphology-based species identifications alone may not be accurate. As a result, trade in certain species may be overestimated, whereas the commercialization of other species may not be recorded at all.
植物根作为传统药物进行交易，是全球许多人重要的收入来源。破坏性的采收方式威胁到一些植物物种的生存。药用根的采收者根据自己的民间分类法来识别所采集的物种，但一旦干燥或磨粉的根进入商业化链条，准确识别就变得更具挑战性。
对马拉喀什麦地那交易的四种根产品的形态多样性进行了调查。选取了51个根样本，使用三个标记trnH-psbA、rpoC1和ITS进行DNA条形码分子鉴定。使用BLAST在一个定制的摩洛哥药用植物及其最亲近近缘种的参考数据库中搜索序列，该数据库已提交至NCBI基因库。
结合psbA-trnH、rpoC1和ITS能够将大多数市场样本鉴定到物种水平。物种水平的条形码鉴定结果很少与文献中给出的学名相符，包括最具权威性且被广泛引用的药典。
结论/意义：从马拉喀什交易的药用植物产品中选取的四种根复合体均包含不止一个物种，但并非如之前所断言的那样。这些发现对濒危植物物种贸易监测具有重大意义，因为仅基于形态的物种鉴定可能不准确。因此，某些物种的贸易量可能被高估，而其他物种的商业化情况可能根本未被记录。
