Identification of Interspecific and Intraspecific Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms in Papaver spp.

The plants of the Papaveraceae family are used for ornamental purposes because of their varicolored flowers, and are known as medicinal crops. Some species of poppy are used in foods such as salads or sorbets, utilizing the seeds, leaves, pedicels, and petals. There are several morphological similarities among the species of this family, which make it difficult to distinguish the seeds of different species or identify opium poppies. The family is known to contain about 100 species. The leaves of Iceland poppy (Papaver nudicaule) cultivars with five different flower colors (white, yellow, pink, orange, and scarlet) were sequenced to obtain transcriptome data. Sequencing was done on plants in three different developmental growth stages (leaf rosette, branching and elongation of internodes, and blossom and seed formation). Systematic bioinformatics analysis was conducted to identify single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) unique to the five Papaver nudicaule cultivars and two other Papaver species (Papaver rhoeas and Papaver somniferum). A 739-Mb reference transcriptome (94.6% BUSCO completeness score) from a 566-Gb RNA-sequencing (RNA-Seq) dataset was obtained. Likewise, 18 significant SNPs were identified to authenticate the three species and five cultivars of Papaver. This study will facilitate future Papaver research, including evaluation of the results for more detailed characterization.