Abstract
Little is known about the genome structure and the genetic origin of Rosa damascene L., widely distributed in Taif, Saudi Arabia for beauty and perfume production. For that, four specific barcodes; ITS2, matK, rbcL and t-mH were employed to genetically identify three Rosa species; R. damascena, R. hybrida and R. damascena Trigintipetala cultivated in Taif leading to the discrimination among them from one hand, and reviewing the previous suggestions of R. damascena origin from the other hand. rbcL, t-rnH and matK revealed more effectiveness in sequence quality and species discrimination capability than ITS2 across the genome of Rosa depending on estimations of transition/transversion bias (R), Tajima relative evolutionary rate tests and the phylogenetic relationships using the Maximum Likelihood Tree method. R. damascena lineage exhibited accelerated evolutionary rates. The phylogenetic analyses proved the heterogeneous origin of Rosa cultivars from Taif doubting the validity of the previous suggestions about the genetic origin of R. damascena.