Chloroplast phylogenomics of Passiflora
The genus Passiflora comprises about 520 species, of which 145 occur in Brazil and 83 are endemic. The classical taxonomy, proposed based on various floral and vegetative structures, subdivided the genus into 22 subgenera. However, phylogenetic analyses, based on molecular data, did not confirm this infrageneric division, and it was necessary to reduce the number of subgenera to four: Astrophea, Decaloba, Deidamioides, and Passiflora, with Astrophea being the most ancestral. Three clades were recognized as monophyletic (Astrophea, Decaloba, and Passiflora) while the position of Deidamioides remains unresolved, as this clade has shown to be paraphyletic in the data collected so far. Using sequences from the chloroplast genome (cpDNA), our group conducted phylogenomic analyses that resulted in highly supported trees, contributing to the understanding of evolutionary relationships within Malpighiales and the Fabidae clade, including, in the analysis, the cpDNA of Passiflora edulis. In this proposal, the same approach will be applied to study the evolution of the genus Passiflora, aiming to assist in understanding the status of the subgenus Deidamioides.