Plastome characterization of Musa indandamanensis , an endemic banana in Andaman and Nicobar Islands, India

Musa is one of the most economically important genera distributed throughout the globe. Many species of this genus are narrowly endemic to India and are used as a food source or herbal medicines by the tribal communities. One of the economically important species, Musa indandamanensis , also known as a sweet banana with orange pulp, is confined to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands (A&N) in India. In the present study, we sequenced and characterized the complete plastome of M . indandamanensis and compared it with closely allied species M. kattuvazhana and different taxa belonging to the section Musa . The plastome of M. indandamanensis is 170,207 bp long in size and depicts a typical quadripartite structure having 88,753pb long LSC, 10,820 bp long SSC, and two 35,317 bp long IRs. Moreover, it also depicted 21, 29, 11, and 3, forward, palindromic, reverse and complement repeats, respectively. It also possesses 30, 9, 7, 9, 4, 2, and 7, mono, di, tri, tetra, penta, hexa, and compound SSRs, respectively. Corroborating the previous studies, some nucleotide hotspot regions ( atpH – atpI , ndhG – ndhI , and rpoB – petN and psbC – psaB ) were also revealed during this comparative study. The current phylogenomic study confirmed the placement of M. indandamanensis in section Musa as a sister to M . kattuvazhana . The plastome data generated in the study would provide the baseline data for future phylogenetic studies.