<![CDATA[Purple Cantigi (Vaccinium varingifolium (Blume) Miq.) is an endemic plant of Indonesia that has the potential as a source of food and medicine. This plant grows in highland areas with an altitude of 1,800–3,340 meters above sea level. DNA extraction of woody plants with high secondary metabolites such as Purple Cantigi often faces obstacles due to interfering compounds. This study aims to analyze the morphological and genetic characteristics of Purple Cantigi from West Java (Mount Gede, Mount Tangkuban Parahu, and Kawah Putih Ciwidey) and optimize the DNA isolation protocol based on the Viogene Plant Mini Kit. Total DNA isolation was carried out by comparing the commercial standard protocol and the protocol with modified incubation and elution. Amplification of the Internal Transcribed Spacer (ITS) gene using universal primers ITS_u1 (forward) and ITS_u4 (reverse) produced a DNA band fragment of ±750 bp. Phylogenetic tree reconstruction using the Maximum Likelihood (ML), Neighbor-Joining (NJ), Minimum Evolution (ME), and Maximum Parsimony (MP) methods showed that the West Java purple Cantigi samples formed a monophyletic group (99–100% bootstrap probability) with the reference V. varingifolium in the NCBI database. Intraspecific genetic distances showed a similarity index of 98–100%.]]>
Copyrights © 2026
