Super food Lycium barbarum (Solanaceae) traceability via an internal transcribed spacer 2 barcode

Xin TY, Yao H, Gao HH, Zhou XZ, Ma XC, Xu CQ, Chen J, Han JP, Pang XH, Xu R, Song JY, Chen SL.

The National Engineering Laboratory for Breeding of Endangered Medicinal Materials, Institute of Medicinal Plant Development, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical college, Beijing 100193, China.

Abstract

The recent “horsemeat scandal” and “fish fraud” have focused extensive attention on food safety worldwide. Plant-origin food safety must also be examined. Lycium barbarum, commonly known as Goji (or wolfberry), is considered a “super food” because of its nutritive properties, and it is much more expensive than L. chinense and other varieties. However, distinguishing them merely by sight is difficult. Thus, developing a useful tool for tracing food is crucial. In this study, we utilized an internal transcribed spacer 2 (ITS2) as a DNA barcode for distinguishing L. barbarum, L. chinense, and L. ruthencium. The genomic DNA from 67 fruit samples collected from the field and market was extracted. Ideal ITS2 barcodes were obtained by PCR amplification and sequencing. Based on the ITS2 barcode, the neighbor-joining (NJ) tree, BLAST1, and nearest distance methods were able to differentiate the three above-mentioned species. Therefore, we present the ITS2 barcode as a powerful tool for tracing Goji.

Food Res Int. 2013;54:1699-704.