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ARS Home » Pacific West Area » Aberdeen, Idaho » Small Grains and Potato Germplasm Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #87824
Title: ANALYSIS OF DNA FROM A SINGLE, MATURE BARLEY SEED BY THE DNA POLYMERASE CHAIN REACTION (PCR) TECHNIQUE

Author
item Hang, An
item Burton, Charlotte
item Jones, Berne
item Hoffman, David

Submitted to: Cereal Chemistry
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 11/16/1998
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary: Barley variety identification that can be done quickly and accurately is important to the malting and brewing industries. In some cases, the answer is needed in one day or less. Extraction of usable DNA from seed would expedite varietal identification procedures. We tested a procedure that extracted DNA from a living portion or embryo of the seed from four barley varieties. We found that DNA extracted from a single embryo was practical for barley identification purposes. Work is underway to test DNA from the storage tissue or endosperm as well.

Technical Abstract: This study was conducted to investigate whether DNA extracted from a single embryo of a barley seed is suitable for polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification. We extracted DNA from one-seed samples and five-seed samples of the four barley cultivars, 'Bowman', 'Colter', 'Crystal', and 'Russell'. Six random-amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) primers and one sequence-tagged-site (STS) primer were used for DNA amplification. DNA polymorphism was found with the STS primer and four of the RAPD primers. The banding patterns of DNA from one-seed samples were almost identical to those of the five-seed samples. This indicated that DNA extracted from a single seed embryo is practical for PCR analysis. The technique we used is simple, fast, and can be applied to the identification of barley cultivars.