Retrieval of hundreds of nuclear loci from herbarium specimens

Herbaria are unparalleled collections of biodiversity information representing the world’s flora. However, this treasure has remained largely inaccessible to genetic studies, frequently limited by the low yields of poor-quality DNA. Next-generation sequencing (NGS) has transformed every field of biological research. The different strategies for accessing genetic data using NGS are changing the direction of biodiversity research—we are no longer constrained by a relatively small number of markers for non-model organisms, by time and cost limited sample sizes, or by incomplete datasets due to recalcitrant DNA extractions or PCR amplification failure. Here we show that targeted enrichment through hybrid capture can be used to generate hundreds of kilobases of nuclear sequence data of the Neotropical genus Inga, from herbarium specimens as old as 180 years and using as little as 16 ng of degraded DNA.