Phylogenetic Relationships of <i>Santalum album</i> and its Adulterants as Inferred from Nuclear DNA Sequences

Abstract

The East Indian sandalwood, Santalum album, valued for its fragrant oil yielding heartwood is a major ingredient in indigenous medicines and perfumes. Scarcity of sandal has led to illegal felling of sandal trees, and adulteration of sandalwood and oil. This study represents the first molecular phylogeny of S. album and its adulterant species Osyris wightiana, Erythroxylum monogynum, Buxus sempervirens, Ximenia americana, Osyris lanceolata, and Chukrasia tabularis through 18S and 26S rDNA sequencing. In the Maximum Parsimony (MP) tree for 18S and 26S rDNA data sets, moderate to high bootstrap support was obtained for the nodes. For 18S rDNA data sets, the tree had B. sempervirens and X. Americana as the upper branch, with E. monogynum branched separately to the cluster. The lower branch had S. album and O. wightiana with O. lanceolata joining separately to both clades of the tree. In the MP tree for 26S rDNA datasets, S. album and O. wightiana formed the major cluster with X. americana clustering separate and B. sempervirens and O. wightiana as the lower branch with C. tabularis clustering separate to the tree. The molecular data presented here provided useful information for resolving the phylogenetic relationship of these plants. Inferences from this study are in accordance with Cronquist's system of classification of flowering plants where all the species originate from a single phylogenetic tree of Rosidae.

Pitfalls and promises of raw drug identification techniques in the ayurvedic industry: an overview

“…Several studies has reported the adulteration of Stephania tetrandra (Fang-Ji) roots with roots of the toxic herb, Aristolochia fangchi (Guang-Fang-Ji) leading to major renal failure (Jadot et al 2017;Michl et al 2013). Similarly, Mesua ferrea was adulterated with Calophyllum inophyllum (Poornima 2010), Piper nigrum with Lantana camara and Embelia ribes (Dhanya and Sasikumar 2010), Papavar somniferum with Amaranthus paniculatas (Dhanya and Sasikumar 2010), Santalum album with Erythroxylum monogynum (Chembath et al 2012), Gloriosa superba with Ipomea species (Kumar et al 2018) as well as Cassia fistula was adulterated with Senna auriculata (Seethapathy et al 2015). In 2002, the US Food and Drug Administration received several reports of liver-related injuries such as hepatitis, cirrhosis, and liver failure due to consumption of Piper methysticum containing products which was subsequently banned in Germany, Switzerland, France, Canada and UK (US Food and Drug Administration 2001).…”