Mosa Kareem A, Soliman Sameh, El-Keblawy Ali, Ali Muna A, Hassan Hessa A, Tamim Aysha A B, Al-Ali Moza M
Department of Applied Biology, College of Sciences, University of Sharjah, P.O. Box 27272, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates.
Department of Biotechnology, Faculty of Agriculture, Al-Azhar University, Cairo, Egypt.
Recent Pat Food Nutr Agric. 2018;9(1):55-64. doi: 10.2174/2212798410666180409101714.
Commercially available herbal and medicinal plants-based products are susceptible to substitution or contamination with other unlabeled or undesired materials. This will reduce the quality of the product, and may lead to intoxication and allergy.
DNA barcoding is a molecular technology that allows the identification of plant materials at the species level, by sequencing short stretches of standardized gene sequences from nuclear or organelle genome in an easy, rapid, accurate and cost-effective manner. The aim of this research is to apply DNA barcoding to investigate the authenticity of commercially available herbal and medicinal plant-based products within the UAE markets. A total of 30 samples were analyzed, covering six different herbal products (thyme, cardamom, anise, basil, turmeric, and ginger), obtained in fresh and dried forms. DNA was extracted and three barcode loci including (rbcL), (matK) and (ITS) were amplified, sequenced and analyzed by BLAST.
In terms of amplification efficiency, the results suggest that rbcL is the most suitable marker for species identification giving 75% of successful amplification, followed by ITS with 66.67%, whereas matK had the lowest with 18.52%. Adulteration was detected in two samples, ginger powder and dry thyme leave samples. The adulterants were from Triticum and Oryza genera.
Clearly, the results from this report provide evidence that DNA barcoding technique is efficient in the recognition of commercial plant products. Thus, it can be considered as a fast, effective, and reliable method to detect adulteration in plant-based products in the UAE market.
市售的草药和药用植物基产品容易被其他未标记或不需要的物质替代或污染。这会降低产品质量，并可能导致中毒和过敏。
DNA条形码技术是一种分子技术，它能够通过对来自核基因组或细胞器基因组的短片段标准化基因序列进行测序，以简单、快速、准确且经济高效的方式在物种水平上鉴定植物材料。本研究的目的是应用DNA条形码技术来调查阿联酋市场上市售草药和药用植物基产品的真伪。共分析了30个样品，涵盖六种不同的草药产品（百里香、小豆蔻、茴芹、罗勒、姜黄和生姜），有新鲜和干燥两种形式。提取DNA，并对包括（rbcL）、（matK）和（ITS）在内的三个条形码位点进行扩增、测序，并通过BLAST进行分析。
就扩增效率而言，结果表明rbcL是最适合物种鉴定的标记，成功扩增率为75%，其次是ITS，为66.67%，而matK最低，为18.52%。在两个样品中检测到掺假，即姜粉和干百里香叶样品。掺假物来自小麦属和稻属。
显然，本报告的结果证明DNA条形码技术在识别商业植物产品方面是有效的。因此，它可被视为检测阿联酋市场上植物基产品掺假的一种快速、有效且可靠的方法。
