Impact of organic fertilizers on performance of strawberry cv. Sweet Charlie under sub-tropical conditions of Punjab

Abstract

Medicinal plants are being used since from the days of yore for the treatment and management of human, animals and plant diseases. Although there was a slump in their use for some period, it is re-attaining popularity due to its unmatched benefits. The enormous demand at both national and international market has resulted in necessity to maintain the purity and authenticity of plants. As most of the herbal medicines are administered in dried form, identification and authentication is becoming difficult. The current molecular methods to identify such material demand quality DNA for downstream molecular analysis. Obtaining the quality DNA from the available extraction protocols in selected medicinal herbs is troublesome due to the interference of plant secondary metabolites. There are quite a few publications in which specific protocols for isolation has been defined for a particular family or species of medicinal herbs. The prior art describes various protocols for DNA extractions in fresh and dried samples, whereas the extension of the same methods universally to obtain quality DNA from dry samples was either unsuccessful or time-consuming and expensive. This necessitates us to develop and optimize the efficient and economical quality DNA extraction protocol. The resulted modified protocol is rapid, simple and effective for dried plant material and very useful for further molecular methods for authentication. This method does not require expensive chemicals such as proteinase K, liquid nitrogen etc. The extracted DNA was also suitable for PCR and RAPD, ISSR proofing.