DNA Fingerprinting of Medicinal plant by RAPD and RFLP of Piper nigrum

Abstract

Herbal medicine has been enjoying renaissance among the consumers through the world. Use of indigenous drugs from plant origin forms a major part of complementary and alternative medicine / traditional medicine (CAM/TM). One of the impediments in the acceptance of herbal formulation is the lack of standardization and quality control profiles. Classical pharmocognosy techniques like morphology, microscopy, phytochemistry, and chromatography are subjective and may not be of use always. Adulteration of market sample remains a major problem in domestic and export market due to confusing nomenclature and lack of correct botanical identification of traded raw drugs. Therefore, application of DNA based marker for authentication is considered as an effective and reliable tool by several research groups. For developing sequence specific markers different methods are RFLP,AFLP,RAPD,SSR sequencing of rDNA-ITS region and DNA bar-coding are used the present study describes the methods involved in developing markers for one of the common medicinal plant of India pepper(piper nigrum) using ITS ,RAPD and RFLP techniques. There are several controversial drugs in trade, this method can be used for other controversial plants as well for species – specific marker development