Dendrobium officinale Kimura et Migo is an orchid with both medicinal and edible values and a high economic value. The wild resources of D. officinale are in an endangered state. Compared with the wild D. officinale, cultivated D. officinale exhibits inferior quality and a low content of medicinal components. Polyploid induction is a conventional breeding tool for genome doubling of species, which can effectively increase the total amount of plant components to improve the medicinal efficacy of D. officinale. In this study, D. officinale tetraploids were generated by treating the protocorms with colchicine. Morphological observations showed that tetraploids exhibited decreased plant size and leaf shape index and increased stem diameter. Cytological observations showed that the polyploid plants had larger stomata and a lower number of stomata per unit area compared with normal plants. The highest stomata variation of 30.00% was observed when the plant was treated with 0.3% colchicine for 24 h. Chromosomal observations showed that treatment of plants with 0.2% colchicine for 48 h resulted in the highest tetraploid induction rate of 10.00%. A total of 10 tetraploids were successfully obtained by inducing plant protoplasts with colchicine. The number of diploid D. officinale chromosomes was 38 with a base number of 19, and the karyotype formula was 2n = 2x = 38 = 24m + 14sm with a karyotype asymmetry coefficient of 60.59%, belonging to type 2B. The number of tetraploid D. officinale chromosomes was 76 with a base number of 19, and the karyotype formula was 2n = 4x = 76 = 58m + 18sm with a karyotype asymmetry coefficient of 60.04%, belonging to type 2B. This study determined the optimal mutagenesis treatment based on the chromosome observation results, investigated the relationship between the phenotype and ploidy level, and generated the polyploid germplasm of D. officinale, thereby laying the foundation for the breeding of new D. officinale cultivars enriched with compounds of medicinal value.

Dahlia pinnata Cavanilles 1791 is an important ornamental plant worldwide. The chloroplast genome has obvious advantages in studies of systematic evolution at the plant classification and species level, making it an important resource for phylogenetic research.Here, we sequenced the full chloroplast genome from D. pinnata 'Chocolate' and found that it exhibited a typical tetrad structure. The full-length D. pinnata chloroplast genome was 152,107 bp, with a GC content of 38.45%. The genome included an 83,704 bp large single-copy (LSC) region, an 18,347 bp small single-copy (SSC) region, and a pair of 25,028 bp inverted repeats (IRa and IRb). A total of 134 genes were annotated, including 86 protein-coding genes, 38 transfer RNA genes, 8 ribosomal RNA genes, and 2 pseudogenes. Analysis of password preferences shows that passwords chosen by D. pinnata tend to end with A/U. A total of 161 SSR markers were detected in the simple sequence repeat (SSR) analysis. Phylogenetic analysis that the Dahlia species formed a monophyly. Dahlia was clustered with Cosmos-Bidens, which differed from studies using nuclear genomic DNA. We suggest that nuclear-cytoplasmic incongruences may be widespread in Asteraceae, and should be thoroughly evaluated in order to understand the true evolutionary history of this economically-important group of plants.