The guanidinium thiocyanate-LiCl-hot phenol method for high purity and high integrity RNA isolation from plant tissues was established. Comparing with other methods that involved guanidinium thiocyanate, this method costs less and produces RNA molecules with better quality. The working concentration of guanidinium thiocyanate used was reduced more than 40 times compared with previous methods. The isolated RNA with this method gave 4 ribosomal RNA (rRNA) bands when analysed by formaldehyde agarose gel electrophoresis. Northern hybridization, mRNA isolation and following in vitro translation experiments performed with this RNA also gave good results.