Study of molecular and genetic diversity of Java Tea (Orthosiphon stamineus Benth.) as a basis for plant improvement.

Orthosiphon stamineus Benth. commonly known as misai kucing or Java Tea is a medical plant originated from Southeast Asia countries such as Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei. In Malaysia, two varieties had been identified based on the color of the flowers. One variety has white flower while the other has light purple flowers. It had been proven that the herb can effectively treat various ailments especially related to the kidney. The plant was also believed to have anti-allergic, antihypertensive, anti-inflammatory and diuretic properties. Information on genetic diversity of the species was very limited. In the presence study, twenty eight genotypes of O. stamineus from various accessions within Malaysia and Indonesia were screened by using forty RAPD primers (10 mer). Results showed that twenty primers generated stable band patterns, a total of 159 consistent and ambiguous polymorphic bands were produced ranging size from 100 bp to 1.5 kb. From the amplification products recorded, 35% were monomorphic, common to all species. Whereas, another 65% perform polymorphic this revealed the relationship between these species. Matrix data was used to generate a dendogram (UPGMA) of genetic distance between O. stamineus. The result of fingerprinting based on molecular data showed that, the 28 accessions of O. stamineus are divided by two major clusters. Cluster I categorized as white variety of O. stamineus while Cluster II is a purple variety of O. stamineus. The phylogenetic tree based on the similarity matrix revealed 74%-96% genetic relatedness among 28 genotypes. The phylogenetic tree showed that the two species of white and purple O. stamineus were divided into several subspecies.