Abstract:
Rice is a staple food for people of many Asian countries. The rice genome is already
mapped and characterized, and it is the smallest of the major cereal crop genomes. DNA
extraction is a very important step nowadays in the genomic studies of rice. An efficient,
unique and less time consuming DNA extraction protocol is needed for the molecular level
study of most rice varieties. Extracted DNA should be very pure and of high quality too.
Therefore, this study was targeted to compare the efficiencies of various DNA extraction
techniques available to isolate DNA from selected rice varieties in Sri Lanka. The DNA
extraction methods developed by Bousquet et al., Cheng et al., Doyle et al., and Michiels
et al. were applied to five different local rice varieties, grown in different parts of Sri Lanka,
namely, Mooddaikaruppan, H4, Periyavellai, 500-1 and IR8. Based on the quantity and
quality of the extracted DNA, tested by measuring the absorbance of DNA at 260 nm using
a Nanodrop® ND-1000 spectrophotometer and measuring the ratio of A260 / A280 and
electrophoresis on an agarose gel, the efficiency of the extraction method chosen varied
among these selected five rice varieties. Among the methods used, the method introduced
by Cheng et al., yielded an acceptable quality of amplifiable DNA with satisfactory
concentrations for all the selected five Sri Lankan rice varieties.
