Taxonomical Identification of Agarwood-Producing Species

概要

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Recent overexploitation in Asian tropical forests has caused serious shortages of natural resources of timber species some of which are now threatened with extinction. Agarwoodproducing species belonging to Aquilaria, Gyrinops, and Gonystylus are listed in Appendix II of CITES as endangered. Meanwhile, attempts to produce agarwood using cultivated trees have proven unsuccessful. A scientific explanation of how resin is generated and accumulated is required to artificially produce agarwood. However, fundamental to the research is the identification of the source plant, which can be difficult. Therefore, we compared DNA sequences of some Aquilaria plants collected from different locations to examine whether this method was applicable and if so, which DNA region was suitable. We found the psbC-trnS region to be applicable but required authentic sequences derived from correctly identified specimens, which would be a major task. A morphological comparison of samples with herbarium specimens was performed along with the DNA sequencing, and morphological characteristics were discussed.
日本生薬学会の論文
2005-06-20