Valner Matheus Milanezi Jordão¹, Su-Jang Kim²P, Hye-Joo Byun², Bo-Yoon Seol², Asif Shabodin Tamboli², Ibrar Ahmed³, In-Su Choi², Peter J. Matthews⁴

¹Programa de Pós-Graduação em Botânica, Escola Nacional de Botânica Tropical (ENBT), Instituto de Pesquisa Jardim Botânico do Rio de Janeiro (JBRJ), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; ²Department of Biological Sciences and Biotechnology, Hannam University, Daejeon, Korea; ³Microbiological Analysis Team, Group for Biometrology, Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science (KRISS), Daejeon, Korea; ⁴Field Sciences Laboratory, National Museum of Ethnology, Suita, Japan

Taro (Colocasia esculenta) is a culturally and nutritionally important crop with a long history of cultivation in Korea. However, the genetic diversity of cultivated taro in Korea and its phylogenetic relationships with global taro remain insufficiently understood, and molecular tools for lineage discrimination of cultivated taro are still limited. In this study, we analyzed the complete plastid genomes (plastomes) of four cultivated taro samples from South Korea (CESKR01–CESKR04), conducted phylogenetic analyses, and identified plastome-based molecular markers for lineage discrimination and cultivar management. The analyzed plastomes exhibited a typical quadripartite structure, with sizes ranging from 162,376 to 162,546 bp. Phylogenetic analyses clearly resolved the two major cultivated taro plastid lineages (CI and CII). CESKR01, CESKR02, and CESKR03 belonged to the temperate-associated CII haplogroup, whereas CESKR04 was placed within the tropical-associated CI haplogroup, indicating the presence of distinct plastid lineages among cultivated taro in Korea. Based on comparative plastome analyses, plastid simple sequence repeat (cpSSR) and single nucleotide polymorphism (cpSNP) markers were developed, and a total of eight informative markers were selected. These markers provide an effective tool for plastid lineage discrimination in cultivated taro and have applications in germplasm management.