I need to recover DNA from past plant populations of an specific genera. There are a few samples in local herbaria, but some of them were just dried and another were treated with ethanol before drying.
I have no experience with such samples, but I don't think so. If it will be sufficiently hydrated during the extraction, it shall be fine.
You may have problem with fragmented DNA though. But ou cannot really do anything about it by now.
Fresh leaf is the preferred tissue for DNA extraction as they contain low concentration of metabolites and polysaccharides (Jobes et al., 1995). However, dry leaves can also be used for DNA extraction but the yield and quality will be comparatively lower than the DNA isolated from young leaves. In the following papers they have assayed different protocols for DNA extraction from herbarium samples, and the best results were obtained using DNeasy. However, amplification of fragments >400 bp from this DNA was difficult, Please have a look at these
http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Lenka_Zaveska_Drabkova/publication/259700673_DNA_extraction_from_herbarium_specimens/file/60b7d52dfaa7dbcdd1.pdf
https://www.researchgate.net/deref/http%3A%2F%2Fdownload.springer.com%2Fstatic%2Fpdf%2F553%2Fart%25253A10.1007%25252FBF02799431.
pdf%3Fauth66%3D1394239169_698c12d04feaea97aef73e36a3c98ccd%26ext%3D.pdf
You should have no difficulty, as long as you have enough material to make up for the lower yield and more fragmented DNA.
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