Utilizing DNA Barcoding for Enhanced Plant Species Identification: An In-Depth Review

Plant identification is crucial and routine taxonomic procedure in order to understand and conserve the biodiversity. Recently many tools and techniques are available for identification and conservation. One of them is DNA barcoding. DNA barcoding is a diagnostic technique for species identification using a short, standardized DNA region. DNA barcoding is an expedient sequence-based means of identifying species across all stages of development and even from trace amount of tissue. The aim DNA barcoding is to establish a shared community resource of DNA sequences that can be used for identification, discrimination or taxonomic classification of organisms. DNA barcoding may provide a rapid genetic screening tool to identifying selected noxious grass weeds at the vegetative growth. DNA barcoding is well established in animals but there is not yet any universally accepted barcodes for plants. Hence, working on monocotyledons is challenging and as well as interesting. There is currently no consensus on which candidate markers comprise the best plant DNA barcoding region; however, DNA barcodes such as rbcL, matK, psbA-trnH and ITS have been proposed for the plant kingdom. Present study provides an account of some DNA barcoding research that have been done previously on plants. Also presenting the future aspects for identifying the plant species through DNA barcoding.