Abstract
Ophiorrhiza baviensis Drake, a flowering medical plant in the Rubiaceae, exists uncertainly within the Ophiorrhiza genus' evolutionary relationships. For the first time, the whole chloroplast (cp) genome of an O. baviensis Drake species was sequenced and annotated. Our findings demonstrate that the complete cp genome of O. baviensis is 154,770 bp in size, encoding a total of 128 genes, including 87 protein-coding genes, 8 rRNAs, and 33 tRNAs. A total of 59 SSRs were screened in the studied cp genome, along with six highly variable loci, which can be applied to generate significant molecular markers for the Ophiorrhiza genus. The comparative analysis of the O. baviensis cp genome with two published others of the Ophiorrhiza genus revealed a high similarity; however, there were some notable gene rearrangements in the O. densa plastome. The maximum likelihood phylogenetic trees were constructed based on the concatenation of the rps16 gene and the trnL-trnF intergenic spacer sequence, indicating a close relationship between the studied O. baviensis and other Ophiorrhiza. This study will provide a theoretical molecular basis for identifying O. baviensis Drake, as well as species of the Ophiorrhiza genus, and contribute to shedding light on the chloroplast genome evolution of Rubiaceae.