ИСТИНА

The invasion of giant hogweeds poses a serious threat for ecosystems, human health and economic activity. The genetic characterization of invasive species can contribute to their biological control. The aim of this work was to study the genetic diversity of Heracleum sosnowskyi in the primary and introduced area. We investigated a set of Heracleum samples obtained from herbaria (MW, LE) and collected in 2022 by volunteers using whole genome sequencing, complemented with sample from NCBI archive. Our data included closely related species such as H. mantegazzianum, also with high invasive potential. We analyzed the variability of plastid genome and nuclear ribosomal RNA operon in this set. Our results show that: 1) there is no decrease of genetic diversity in introduced area, probably due to multiple rounds of introduction from different populations of primary area; 2) there is no clear distinction between H. sosnowskyi and H. mantegazzianum based on current data; 3) the evolution of H. sosnowskyi included hybridization and/or plastid introgression; 4) there is an intragenomic polymorphism in external transcribed spacer (a part of rRNA operon). Supported by RSF grant 21-74-20145.