Oleic Acid Rich Tree-borne Oilseeds from Forests of Assam, India.

North East India is a home of tremendous and versatile vegetative oil bearing materials because of the subtropical climatic conditions. Screening, characterization, and domestication of high yielding treeborne oilseeds rich in oleic acid and tocopherol are highly demandable from industrial aspects. As very few studies have been carried out in this regard from this region, our investigation aims to exploit new sources of tree-borne oilseeds rich in omega fatty acids for edible and non-edible purposes from both known and unknown plants. Six lesser-known tree-borne oilseeds were characterized based on oil content, tocopherol composition and metal content. The fatty oil was found more in Dysoxylum procerum (50%). The dominating fatty acid was oleic acid ranged between 38.4 to 64%. The oil of Terminalia bellirica showed high content of tocopherol (0.05%). Among eleven metals (Ca, Cu, Zn, Mg, Mn, Fe, Pb, Cd, As, Na, K) in all the six fatty oil contents, Pb and Cu showed high concentrations as compared to the codex standard while Fe values of all the oil contents were below the permissible concentrations.

Development of an effective and efficient DNA isolation method for Cinnamomum species.

Different species of Cinnamomum are rich in polysaccharide's and secondary metabolites, which hinder the process of DNA extraction. High quality DNA is the pre-requisite for any molecular biology study. In this paper we report a modified method for high quality and quantity of DNA extraction from both lyophilized and non-lyophilized leaf samples. Protocol reported differs from the CTAB procedure by addition of higher concentration of salt and activated charcoal to remove the polysaccharides and polyphenols. Wide utility of the modified protocol was proved by DNA extraction from different woody species and 4 Cinnamomum species. Therefore, this protocol has also been validated in different species of plants containing high levels of polyphenols and polysaccharides. The extracted DNA showed perfect amplification when subjected to RAPD, restriction digestion and amplification with DNA barcoding primers. The DNA extraction protocol is reproducible and can be applied for any plant molecular biology study.