• Korean Journal of Medicinal Crop Science
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.91-96
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• 2013

This study describes the identification of Panax species using mitochondrial consensus primers. Initially, a total of thirty primers were tested in ten Korean ginseng cultivars and two foreign Panax species, P. quinquefolius and P. notoginseng. In the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification results, three primers (cox1, nad1/2-3 and nad2/1-2) generated co-dominant polymorphic banding patterns discriminating Korean ginseng cultivars from P. quinquefolius and P. notoginseng. However, these primers could not generated polymorphisms among the Korean ginseng cultivars, and simply represented species-specific polymorphisms for P. quinquefolius and P. notoginseng. Primers PQ91 and PN418 were designed from the consensus sequence of nad1/2-3 region. Two banding patterns (A or B) were detected in PQ91. Korean ginseng cultivars and P. notoginseng shared the same banding pattern (A type) and P. quinquefolius was identified another banding pattern (B type). In the case of PN418, two banding patterns (A or B) were detected in the Korean ginseng cultivars and two foreign Panax species. Korean ginseng cultivars and P. quinquefolius shared the same banding pattern (A type) and P. notoginseng was identified another banding pattern (B type). The combination banding patterns of three Panax species, Korean ginseng cultivars (Panax ginseng C. A. Mey.), P. quinquefolius and P. notoginseng, was identified as 'AA', 'BA' and 'AB', respectively. Consequently, PQ91 and PN418 primer sets can be used to distinguish among Panax species.