Molecular Characterization of Zingiber Officinale Cultivars in Malaysia

Ng, Pui Ling (2020) Molecular Characterization of Zingiber Officinale Cultivars in Malaysia. Final Year Project (Bachelor), Tunku Abdul Rahman University College.

Text Ng Pui Ling_Full Text.pdf Restricted to Registered users only Download (2MB)

Abstract

Zingiber Officinale which is commonly known as ginger, is a plant from the Zingiberaceae family which is widely utilized by people in their daily life from ancient till now. Through evolution, the diversity of Zingiber Officinale cultivars have been expanded by time. In Malaysia, the examples of cultivars that are found for now are Bentong ginger, Bara ginger, Kampung ginger, Feng ginger, Tambunan ginger, and Thai ginger. The information available for identification of these cultivars are not sufficient when solely based on morphological data. In this study, an identification method using PCR-RFLP on analysing the chloroplast DNA (cpDNA) among the Zingiber Officinale cultivars was conducted to determine the polymorphism in cpDNA genome and the evolutionary relationship of ginger cultivars. 10 set of universal primers which target different regions of cpDNA were used to amplify the cpDNA of ginger cultivars. The amplified products were cut with restriction endonuclease to generate restriction profiles. The difference pattern in profile between the cultivars allowed differentiation between cultivars. From the results, the amplification using primers trnT-trnF, trnK1-trnK2 and rbcL1-rbcL2 results in different sizes of PCR products for different samples which showed a genetic variation of cpDNA among cultivars. Overall, each ginger sample has its respective pattern seen when amplified with 10 sets of primers. The restriction profile which was generated from PCR products that were amplified with primer trnS-trnfM and restricted with HinfI showed a chloroplast genetic difference between Bentong ginger from ginger cultivars and the three outgroups have distinct profiles from each other and when compared to ginger cultivars. Generation of more restriction profiles using different restriction endonucleases is required to further discriminate the cultivars.