title: DNA-based identification of Brassica vegetable species for the juice industry.
abstract: Since kale (Brassica oleracea var. acephala), a cruciferous vegetable with a high level of vitamins and functional compounds beneficial to health and wellness, has become widely used in the juice industry, a precise method for quality control of vegetable species is necessary. We describe here a DNA-based identification method to distinguish kale from cabbage (Brassica oleracea var. capitata), a closely related species, which can be inadvertently mixed with kale during the manufacturing process. Using genomic DNA from these vegetables and combinatory sets of nucleotide primers, we screened for random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) fragments and found three cabbage-specific fragments. These RAPD fragments, with lengths of 1.4, 0.5, and 1.5 kb, were purified, subcloned, and sequenced. Based on sequence-tagged sites (STS), we designed sets of primers to detect cabbage-specific identification (CAI) DNA markers. Utilizing the CAI markers, we successfully distinguished more than 10 different local cabbage accessions from 20 kale accessions, and identified kale juices experimentally spiked with different amounts of cabbage.
authors.affiliation: Central Research Institute, Q'sai Co. Ltd., Munakata, Fukuoka 811-3422, Japan.
authors.forename: Kazumi
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Etoh
authors.forename: Noritaka
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Niijima
authors.forename: Masahiko
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Yokoshita
authors.forename: Shin-Ichi
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Fukuoka
mesh_terms: D001483:Base Sequence; D001628:Beverages / Q000032:analysis* / Q000145:classification*; D001937:Brassica / Q000235:genetics*; D018744:DNA, Plant / Q000032:analysis* / Q000737:chemistry; D005511:Food Handling; D019649:Food Industry; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D019105:Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA Technique
chemical_list: D018744:DNA, Plant