Abstract:
Rubber tree (Hevea brasiliensis Muell. Arg.) is an important economic crop of Thailand which currently is the worlds top exporter. However, the conventional morphological characterization of the rubber tree requires specialists. This study aims to analyze nucleotide sequences of the nuclear Internal Transcribed Spacer 1 (ITS1) region and non-coding region between tRNAPhe and tRNAPro genes of the mitochondrial DNA of ten para rubber cultivars. The size of the ITS1 region of all cultivars was 226 base pairs, with 0.88% difference (2/226) and the non-coding region was 256 base pairs, with 0.39% difference (1/256) indicating low variation between cultivars. Therefore, the ITS1 and non-coding regions were not suitable for use as the DNA marker for the rubber tree identification at the cultivar level.