Bar-HRM: a reliable and fast method for species identification of ginseng (Panax ginseng, Panax notoginseng, Talinum paniculatum and Phytolacca Americana)

Abstract

Background Korean ginseng has long been famous and is one of the most well known forms of ginseng. The root of plants in the genus Panax is commonly recognized as ginseng. Different Panax species of ginseng root have been used as treatments. Although many other herbs are called ginseng, they do not contain the active compounds of ginsenosides. In Thailand, we have Thai ginseng which is of course not one of Panax species. Thai ginseng is the root from Talinum paniculatum and, due to its morphological root similarity, it is almost impossible to differentiate between them. Also, another plant species, Phytollacca americana, has significantly similar root morphology to real ginseng but its seeds and root are poisonous. Misunderstanding what true ginseng is compared to others could endanger lives and cause financial loss by buying inferior products. Methods DNA barcoding combination with High Resolution Melting (called Bar-HRM) was used for species discrimination of the Panax ginseng and others. Five regions included ITS2, matK, psbA-trnH and rbcL were evaluated in the analyses. Results The ITS2 region was found to be the most suitable primers for the analysis. The melting profile from the HRM analyses using the chosen ITS2 primers showed that Korean ginseng (Panax ginseng) could be discriminated from other Penax species. Also, other ginseng species with morphological similarity could be easily distinguished from the true ginseng. The developed Bar-HRM method poses a great potential in ginseng species discrimination and thus could be also useful in ginseng authentication.

A Review of Authenticity and Authentication of Commercial Ginseng Herbal Medicines and Food Supplements

“…The widespread use of the ginseng vernacular name across many countries and continents, including for species not from the same genus or even family ( Osathanunkul and Madesis, 2019 ), is a catalyst conducive to adulteration. In Brazil for example, ginseng products have been found to be adulterated with a completely unrelated species from another family, Pfaffia spp., albeit locally known as Brazilian ginseng ( Palhares et al, 2015 ).…”

Lesser-known ethnic leafy vegetables Talinum paniculatum grown at tropical ecosystem: Morphological traits and non-destructive estimation of total leaf area per branch

“…is morphologically different from Korean ginseng (Panax ginseng C.A.Mey), but their enlarged roots look similar. Roots of T. paniculatum exhibited high similarity with roots of P. ginseng and it was almost impossible to differentiate among them (Osathanunkul & Madesis 2019). However, T. paniculatum has not been reported to contain the active compounds of ginsenosides in its roots.…”

“…Talinum paniculatum is also known as Java ginseng (Arefin et al 2021), som Jawa (Saribanon et al 2021), kolesom (Kusumadewi et al 2011), Thai ginseng (Osathanunkul & Madesis 2019), Major Gomes or Erva Gorda plants (Moura et al 2021;Tolouei et al 2019), jewels of opar (Nguyen et al 2018), and many more local names. In Indonesia, T. paniculatum is also considered an ethnic leafy vegetable.…”

Botanical authentication of globe artichoke-containing foods: Differentiation of Cynara scolymus by a novel HRM approach

“…Besides, it targets informative short sequences (<300 bp) from nuclear, plastidial or mitochondrial regions, which is a major advantage to analyse processed samples containing degraded DNA Sun, Li, Xiong, Zhao, & Chen, 2016). HRM analysis has already been developed to discriminate several plant species in complex matrices and to successfully authenticate commercial herbal products and PFS (Costa et al, 2016;Jung, Kim, Yang, Bang, & Yang, 2014;Li et al, 2018;Mishra, Shukla, & Sundaresan, 2018;Osathanunkul & Madesis, 2019;Osathanunkul, Osathanunkul, & Madesis, 2018;Song, Li, Xiong, Liu, & Liang, 2016). However, to our knowledge, methods on the specific identification of C. scolymus or its discrimination from other closely related species have not yet been reported.…”