Molecular genetic studies in oil palm require a cost and time effective method to extract sufficient amount of genomic DNA from a large number of samples. A simplified protocol was developed to isolate high quality DNA from immature spear leaves of Elaeis guineensis. The method was modified from a previously described protocol. The modifications involved increasing the amount of starting material to 2g, grinding the samples in liquid nitrogen, and inclusion of 2% PVP-40, ascorbic acid, DIECA, and 1% β-mercaptoethanol into the lysis buffer. The RNAse treatment was also included to improve the quality of DNA. This method successfully yielded higher amount of DNA that was similar in quality to that prepared using the conventional protocol. The DNA was also suitable for simple sequence repeat (SSR) and single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) analyses.