Abstract
Catharanthus roseus, an important medicinal plant, is known for the production of various pharmaceutical compounds including the anti-tumour drugs, vinblastine, and vincristine. Also, this ornamental plant is widely known for its flowers with different colours. Its varieties are identified on the basis of the morphological characteristics of the flowers, including petals and flower eye colour. Morphological characterization cannot be performed before the flowering stage, leading to a major obstacle for consumers, since most of the sales associated with its medicinal value occur at the vegetative stage. In the present study, we utilized high-throughput, next-generation sequencing to detect chloroplast single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) that are unique to each variety for molecular characterization. The total genomic DNA of eight C. roseus varieties were sequenced using Illumina HiSeq 2000 platform. The alignment of resulting sequences to chloroplast reference genome showed the presence of specific SNPs for all eight varieties. Also, intravarietal SNPs were found that confirmed the applicability of heteroplasmy theory in the chloroplast genome of this species. Thus, this investigation provides valuable insights into molecular characterization of C. roseus, especially at the vegetative stage.