Chloroplast Phylogenomics of Amaranthus

The main aims of the study were to construct full length, annotated chloroplasts for a set of amaranth accessions and subsequently attempt phylogenomic-based classifications. The whole chloroplast of Amaranthus tricolor, an economically important, but neglected, leafy vegetable was assembled and annotated using Illumina high throughput sequencing data. The most favourable barcoding sequences (ITS, matK and rbcL) were utilized to infer genetic relationships between amaranth species. Subsequent sequencing of the full-length chloroplasts of 58 additional amaranth accessions facilitated an in depth phylogenetic analysis to elucidate the genetic relatedness of this genetically diverse genus.