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BACKGROUND: Echinacea purpurea (L.) Moench is in increasing demand worldwide owing to its medicinal value, resulting from the combined effects of several phytochemicals. In the present study, the polymerase chain reaction-amplified randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) markers generated from 45 pre-selected primers were used to predict the contents of total phenol, caffeoyl phenol and alkamide 8+9 (alkamide 8+ alkamide 9) in aerial parts of 70 E. purpurea accessions through stepwise regression analysis. The contents of these phytochemicals were also analyzed chemically.

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Both morphological characteristics and amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) markers were used to validate the genetic fidelity of 1 080 field-grown Echinacea purpurea plants regenerated from leaf explants of donor T5-9. Morphological diagnosis revealed that 1 067 out of 1 080 regenerants were normal, while 13 regenerants were aberrant. AFLP analysis was further performed to assess DNA variations among donor, 43 sampled normal regenerants and all 13 aberrant regenerants. Seven primer combinations generated 471 fragments among donor and normal regenerants, of which 9 fragments were polymorphic. The same primer pairs generated 484 fragments for aberrant regenerants, of which 417 fragments were polymorphic. UPGMA clustering indicated that 42 normal regenerants and donor fell into same cluster at similarity scale of > 0.99, while all 13 aberrant regenerants and one morphologically normal regenerant comprised the other clusters. AFLP analysis indicated that these 14 regenerants are off-types