Genetic diversity analysis and chemical profiling of Indian Acorus calamus accessions from South and North-East India

Acorus calamus L. (Family: Acoraceae) is a well-known traditional, endangered, medicinal and aromatic plant mainly found in India and China. The plant is also widely used in industrial, pharmaceutical and food industries. In the present study, 20 different accessions of Indian A. calamus were subjected to the study of genetic diversity (RAPD), and cytogenetic and phytochemical (beta-asarone) analysis. For RAPD analysis, 9 primers were chosen, which generated 107 DNA fragments. The average percentage of polymorphism was recorded to be 67.23%. The primer OPA 12 showed the highest (100%) polymorphism, whereas the lowest (38.2%) polymorphism was observed for the primer OPBB 6. The polymorphism information content (PIC) values ranged 0.44 (OPA 7) to 0.18 (OPA11), while marker index (MI) values ranged 4.74 (OPA 7) to 0.36 (OPA 11). A dendogram was constructed by UPGMA method and the robustness of the tree was confirmed by, bootstrap analysis with 1000 pseudo samples. For cytogenetic analysis, the 20 A. calamus accessions were screened for their ploidy status. The accessions were found to be either-diploid or triploids. The phytochemical analysis of P-asarone content was determined through by HPLC method. The p-asarone concentration varied in the range of 2.2 to 7.2 mg/100 mg. The results of present study indicated the presence of low level of polymorphism among the A. calamus accessions of South India and North-East India. The phytochemical and cytogenetic analysis revealed that both diploid and triploid have low concentration of beta-asarone irrespective of their geographical location.