Morphological, Anatomical, Physiological and Genetic Studies of Iris aphylla L. Wild Species Conservation in “Ex Situ” Conditions

Maria Apostol (), Lucia Draghia, Culiță Sîrbu, Rodica-Catalina Efrose, Emmanouil Flemetakis, Raluca-Maria Hlihor, Isabela Maria Simion (), Jose Reig Armiñana and Francisco José Garcia Breijo
Additional contact information
Maria Apostol: Department of Horticultural Technologies, Faculty of Horticulture, “Ion Ionescu de la Brad” Iasi University of Life Sciences, 3 Mihail Sadoveanu Alley, 700490 Iasi, Romania
Lucia Draghia: Department of Horticultural Technologies, Faculty of Horticulture, “Ion Ionescu de la Brad” Iasi University of Life Sciences, 3 Mihail Sadoveanu Alley, 700490 Iasi, Romania
Culiță Sîrbu: Department of Plant Science, Faculty of Agriculture, “Ion Ionescu de la Brad” Iasi University of Life Sciences, 3 Mihail Sadoveanu Alley, 700490 Iasi, Romania
Rodica-Catalina Efrose: Department of Experimental and Applied Biology, Institute of Biological Research Iasi Subsidiary, National Institute of Research and Development for Biological Sciences, 296 Independentei Bd., District 6, 060031 Bucharest, Romania
Emmanouil Flemetakis: Department of Biotechnology, Agricultural University of Athens, 75 Iera Odos Str., 11855 Athens, Greece
Raluca-Maria Hlihor: Department of Horticultural Technologies, Faculty of Horticulture, “Ion Ionescu de la Brad” Iasi University of Life Sciences, 3 Mihail Sadoveanu Alley, 700490 Iasi, Romania
Isabela Maria Simion: Department of Pedotechnics, Faculty of Agriculture, “Ion Ionescu de la Brad” Iasi University of Life Sciences, 3 Mihail Sadoveanu Alley, 700490 Iasi, Romania
Jose Reig Armiñana: Instituto Cavanilles de Biodiversidad y Biología Evolutiva, Universitad de València, 46980 Valencia, Spain
Francisco José Garcia Breijo: Departamento de Ecosistemas Agroforestales, Escuela Técnica Superior de IngenieríaAgronómica y del Medio Natural (ETSIAMN), Universitat Politècnica de València, Camino de Vera s/n., 46022 Valencia, Spain

Agriculture, 2024, vol. 14, issue 12, 1-29

Abstract: Wild Iris plants are usually found in spontaneous flora, but due to their ornamental characteristics, they can also be used for ornamental purposes, which means that it is very important to find the perfect conditions for plant growth. This research aimed to evaluate the ornamental value and adaptive behavior of wild Iris aphylla L. in “ex situ” conditions. Plants from wild flora were cultivated experimentally in the Floriculture field at the Faculty of Horticulture, IULS, Iași, Romania. The biometric determinations revealed the significantly higher ornamental value of conserved plants grown in “ex situ” conditions compared to wild plants. In “ex situ” conditions, the plants displayed more vigorous growth (~100%) and had a higher number of flowers per stem (5–9 flowers), whereas, in wild conditions, this species has from two to a maximum of five flowers. Given the absence of anatomical studies in the literature, detailed anatomical investigations of the leaf structure were performed, complemented by analyses of the photosynthetic pigment content to assess the plant’s physiological performance. Additionally, the molecular phylogenetic analyses conducted using two plastid markers ( rbcL and trnL-F ) confirmed the taxonomic classification of the native I. aphylla L. species. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report on the molecular phylogeny of the wild Iridaceae species in Romania. These findings provide insights into the taxonomy, morphology, cultivation potential, and ornamental value of the species, supporting future conservation and horticulture development programs.

Keywords: Iris aphylla L.; molecular identification; genetic markers; plant anatomy; photosynthetic pigments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q1 Q10 Q11 Q12 Q13 Q14 Q15 Q16 Q17 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/14/12/2358/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/14/12/2358/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jagris:v:14:y:2024:i:12:p:2358-:d:1549638

Access Statistics for this article

Agriculture is currently edited by Ms. Leda Xuan

More articles in Agriculture from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().