Identification of elite genotypes through morpho-biochemical and molecular characterization of turmeric (Curcuma longa L.)

Turmeric is recognized as "the golden spice" and "spice of life". The abundant medicinal values of turmeric make it an important industrial crop. The genetic diversity analysis of this species is important for further improvement in its productivity through selective breeding to cap the continuous demand for turmeric. The variance analysis imparted notable differences among genotypes for 17 studied traits under study. High genotypic and phenotypic coefficient of variations were noticed for leaf oil percentage followed by rhizome oil, fresh finger yield, curcumin, dry rhizome per plant, secondary rhizomes per plant and leaves per plant. The genetic divergence assessed by Mahalanobis D2 statistic, evident broad genetic variability among turmeric genotypes as accommodated by seven clusters. Out of 25 simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers, 15 were polymorphic. The average polymorphic information content (PIC) varied between 0.474 and 0.306 with an average of 0.408. The SSR marker analysis and diversity analysis, grouped 24 genotypes of turmeric in four major groups namely A, B, C and D with 13, 7, 3 and 1 genotypes, respectively. The genetic similarity among the genotypes varied from 0.07 to 0.82 (ATG-1/ATG-2) and the average similarity coefficient was (0.23). Marker cuMisat-22, cuMisat-7 and cuMisat-19 were found most suitable for diversity analysis. Based on mean performance and diversity analysis, accession ATG-17 (local collection from Anand) was superior for both fresh and dry rhizome yield per plant. Genotype Kasturi (ATG-21) and ATG-4 4 (local collection from Navsari) can be an important raw materials for the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industries as they were richer in curcumin and rhizome oil content respectively. (c) 2024 SAAB. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.