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With increasing uses of DNA fingerprinting, restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) analysis, and PCR-based techniques like random-amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) in genome research, the difficulty of isolating high molecular weight DNA, especially from plants, fungi, and other organisms with cell walls, becomes a main obstacle. Quite a few protocols have been reported. But almost all of them include freezing with nitrogen and homogenizing with mortal and pestle or a mechanical homogenizer (1, 2). Some of them involve phenol-chloroform extraction (3), while others require gradient sedimentation with cesium chloride or precipitation with CTAB (4). All these treatments are time-consuming and tedious. Here, with the use of benzyl chloride, a simple, fast procedure is developed. Benzyl chloride can destroy cell walls of plants, fungi and bacteria