Morphological Characterization and rbcL DNA Barcoding of Wild Sonchus oleraceus from Omar Al-Mukhtar University Campus, Al-Bayda, Libya

• Latifa S. El-Saifat

  Department of Forestry, Faculty of Natural Resources and Environmental Science, Omar Al-Mukhtar University, Al-Bayda, Libya

  Author

• Zakia Kh. Idris

  Department of Forestry, Faculty of Natural Resources and Environmental Science, Omar Al-Mukhtar University, Al-Bayda, Libya

  Author

  https://orcid.org/0009-0000-1320-9856

• Ahmed Mahmoud Ismail

  Pests and Plant Diseases Unit, College of Agricultural and Food Sciences, King Faisal University, Al-Ahsa 31982, Saudi Arabia

  Author

This study integrates morphometric characterization with rbcL DNA barcoding to document wild Sonchus oleraceus L. from the Omar Al-Mukhtar University campus, Al-Bayda, Libya. Thirty individuals were sampled from six microhabitats, and ten vegetative, reproductive, and biomass traits were analyzed using descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation, and regression. Vegetative and biomass traits were highly variable (shoot fresh weight coefficient of variation, CV = 78.9%), whereas inflorescence length was comparatively uniform (CV = 17.5%). Plant height and root length were strongly correlated (r = 0.942; within-microhabitat r = 0.90), and inflorescence count was inversely related to shoot dry weight (p = 0.002, R² = 28.89%), consistent with a resource-allocation trade-off that remained robust to multiple-testing correction and microhabitat clustering. Voucher examination confirmed that diagnostic characters matched the circumscription of S. oleraceus. For independent verification, genomic DNA was extracted from a pooled sample of the same population, and a partial rbcL region was amplified, sequenced, and analyzed against 25 reference Asteraceae sequences from GenBank. Maximum-likelihood analysis placed the accession within a strongly supported S. oleraceus clade (bootstrap = 98%), sister to S. arvensis (bootstrap = 96%), separating Sonchus from all other genera. Morphological and molecular evidence were concordant. Because the molecular analysis relied on a single pooled accession, the results confirm species-level identity but do not characterize intraspecific genetic diversity; they nonetheless provide a first reference rbcL sequence for S. oleraceus from Libya, addressing the near-absence of North African accessions in public databases.

1. Latifa S. El-Saifat, Department of Forestry, Faculty of Natural Resources and Environmental Science, Omar Al-Mukhtar University, Al-Bayda, Libya

   Department of Forestry, Faculty of Natural Resources and Environmental Science, Omar Al-Mukhtar University, Al-Bayda, Libya

2. Zakia Kh. Idris, Department of Forestry, Faculty of Natural Resources and Environmental Science, Omar Al-Mukhtar University, Al-Bayda, Libya

   Department of Forestry, Faculty of Natural Resources and Environmental Science, Omar Al-Mukhtar University, Al-Bayda, Libya

3. Ahmed Mahmoud Ismail, Pests and Plant Diseases Unit, College of Agricultural and Food Sciences, King Faisal University, Al-Ahsa 31982, Saudi Arabia

   Pests and Plant Diseases Unit, College of Agricultural and Food Sciences, King Faisal University, Al-Ahsa 31982, Saudi Arabia

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