DNA extraction from several herbarium specimens of Ficus and its PCR amplification

Recently herbarium specimens attract more and more attentions as an important DNA resource.It is rather difficult to extract DNA from herbarbium specimens because of their long-term storage.We sampled 9 herbarium specimens of Ficus using 4 DNA extraction methods.Products of the 4 methods were used as templates in PCR amplification for ITS and trnL-F.After comparison,we draw 3 conclusions as follow: 1.the quality of DNA is affected by the facture and depositing situation of the herbarium specimens;2.modified CTAB method is the most suitable method for DNA extraction from Ficus;3.quality of the template is the most important factor to PCR amplification and it is essential to shorten the length of aim sequence for the success of PCR amplification.