Extraction of high-quality RNA from Panax ginseng tissues is particularly difficult due to high levels of polyphenolics and polysaccharides, or other compounds that bind and/or coprecipitate with RNA. The methods such as guanidinum thiocyanate, CTAB and modified Trizol were applied to isolate high purity and integrity RNA from Panax ginseng. By all of these methods total RNA can be obtained, but only by the modified Trizol method, it extracts integrity and undegraded RNA from mature leaf tissue. Following this efficient procedure, 90～120 μg/g total RNA from leaf tissues can be obtained. The ratio of intensities of the 28 S and 18 S rRNA bands was 2∶1. The absorbance ratios (A260/A280) were 1.8 to 2.0. The RNA is suitable for RT-PCR and cDNA library construction.