The invention discloses a method for identifying the age of
ginseng by utilizing the length of a
ginseng telomere. The method comprises the following steps: (A) establishing a
mathematical model: (a1) selecting a plurality of samples from the positions 1-2 cm below the rhizomes of the
ginseng of known age and extracting
genomic DNA from each sample; (a2) taking each
genomic DNA as a template, conducting qPCR on a primer pair distinguished from the ginseng
telomere to obtain a Ct value and marking the Ct value as T, and conducting qPCR on a primer pair distinguished from a
single copy gene of the ginseng to obtain another Ct value and marking the Ct value as S; (a3) calculating the T / S ratio for each ginseng; (a4) taking the ages of the ginseng as the abscissa values and taking all the calculated T / S ratios as the ordinate values to draw a standard linear curve and obtain a curve equation; (B) adopting the
mathematical model to identify the age of ginseng to be measured: obtaining the T / S ratio for the ginseng to be measured according to the operations from step (a1) to step (a3), and substituting the T / S ratio into the
mathematical model to obtain the age of the ginseng to be measured. The method has the advantages that the identified age of ginseng is highly identical with the actual age of the ginseng, the cost is low, and the flux is high. Compared with the traditional
Southern blot technology adopted for measuring the length of a ginseng
telomere, the method provided by the invention has less demand for
DNA and a shorter test period.