Medicinal Plants - International Journal of Phytomedicines and Related Industries

Ashwagandha (Withania somnifera) commonly known as Indian Ginseng belonging to the family Solanaceae is a highly valuable medicinal herb used in the Indian traditional as well as modern system of medicine. Being a highly traded medicinal herb, proper identification and authentication of the raw material is essential for which the molecular characterization is required. As SSR markers are not reported in Ashwagandha, the transferability of SSRs from related species was studied. In this study, cross-species amplification of 85 SSR markers from eggplant (29), potato (17) and pepper/capsicum (39) were tested in 14 genotypes of ashwagandha. A set of 40 primers out of 85 produced specific and scorable PCR products. The results indicated that 48.35% of eggplant markers, 47.1% of potato and 47.36% of capsicum markers showed amplifications and were transferable to ashwagandha. The amplified primers were used for DNA fingerprinting of these genotypes. A total of 74 alleles were detected, out of which 70 primers showed 100% polymorphism among the genotypes. The number of alleles detected ranged from 1 to 6, with an average of 1.85 alleles per primer pair. The polymorphic information content (PIC) value ranged from 0.138 to 0.995 with an average of 0.639.