Astragalus L. is one of the largest angiosperm complex genera that belongs to the family
Fabaceae, subfamily Papilionoideae or Faboideae under the subtribe Astragalinae of the tribe Galegeae.
The current study includes the whole plant morphology, DNA barcode (ITS2), and molecular marker
(SCoT). Ten taxa representing four species of Astragalus were collected from different localities in
Egypt during the period from February 2018 to May 2019. Morphologically, identification and
classification of collected Astragalus plants occurred by utilizing the light microscope, regarding the
taxonomic revisions of the reference collected Astragalus specimens in other Egyptian Herbaria. For
molecular validation, ten SCoT primers were used in this study, producing a unique banding pattern
to differentiate between ten samples of Astragalus taxa which generated 212 DNA fragments with
an average of 12.2 bands per 10 Astragalus samples, with 8 to 37 fragments per primer. The 212
fragments amplified were distributed as 2 monomorphic bands, 27 polymorphic without unique
bands, 183 unique bands (210 Polymorphic with unique bands), and ITS2 gene sequence was showed
as the optimal barcode for identifying Astragalus L. using BLAST searched on NCBI database, and
afterward, analyzing the chromatogram for ITS region, 10 samples have been identified as two
samples representing A. hauarensis, four samples representing A. sieberi, three samples representing A. spinosus and one sample representing A. vogelii. Based on the ITS barcode, A. hauarensis
RMG1, A. hauarensis RMG2, A. sieberi RMG1, A. sieberi RMG2, A. sieberi RMG3, A. sieberi RMG4,
A. spinosus RMG1, A. spinosus RMG2, A. spinosus RMG3, A. vogelii RMG were deposited into GenBank with accession # MT367587.1, MT367591.1, MT367593.1, MT367585.1, MT367586.1, MT367588.1,
MT160347.1, MT367590.1, MT367589.1, MT367592.1, respectively. These results indicated the efficiency of SCoT markers and ITS2 region in identifying and determining genetic relationships between
Astragalus species.
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