Development of Chloroplast Microsatellite Markers for Invasive Carduus (Asteraceae) between East Asia and North America

The genus Carduus (Asteraceae), containing ca. 90 species, is mainly distributed in Eurasia and Africa. Carduus species are one of the most hazardous invasive species, which causes serious environmental threats and biodiversity damages in North America. Thus, the member of Carduus are targeted for classical biological control in this region. Here, we provide the complete cp genome of Carduus crispus using next-generation sequencing technology. The size of cp genomes of C. crispus is 152,342 bp. It shows a typical quadripartite structure, consisting of the large single copy (LSC; 83,254 bp), small single copy (SSC; 18,706 bp), separated by a pair of inverted repeats (IRs; 25,191 bp). It contains 115 unique genes of which 21 genes duplicated in the IR regions. The cpSSR regions of Carduus species were searched through the complete chloroplast genome sequence using a tandem repeat search tool in Geneious with the parameters set to ${\geq}7$ mononucleotide repeats, ${\geq}4$ di- and trinucleotide repeats, and ${\geq}3$ tetra-, penta-, and hexanucleotide repeats. A total of 22 repeat motifs were identified, which may be useful for molecular identification of Korean Carduus species (C. cripus), and providing a guideline for its conservation.