Identification of the New High Oil and Rhizome Yielding Variety of Kaempferia galanga (Jor Lab K-1): A Highly Important Indigenous Medicinal Plants of North East India

Abstract

Kaempferia galanga is very important medicinal and aromatic plants of throughout Asia. It is used in skin diseases, piles, cough, fever, epilepsy, spleen disorders, wounds, asthma and rheumatism; and also useful in digestion. Our investigation objective was to identify the high herbage and high essential oil genotypes. The thirty-five germplasm were evaluated during the year 2013–14. After two years of evaluation high oil and rhizome yielding genotype of K. Galanga was identified and named “Jor Lab K-1″ which was propagated through vegetative means using the rhizome as explant. This elite new genotype was evaluated in four different locations of North East India during the year, 2015 and 2016. The identified germplasm has shown 35 percent superiority over the check variety with rhizome herbage yield of 7.156 tons/ha and dry rhizome recovery of 25 % from fresh rhizomes and the average 2.38 % essential oil in dry rhizome. The essential oil of the dry rhizome, obtained by hydrodistillation was analyzed by GC-MS. The major components found were Ethyl trans-cinnamate (31.12 %), Ethyl trans-p-methoxycinnamate (14.3 %), 1,8-Cineole (10.57 %), Delta-3-Carene (5.12 %) and n-pentadecane (4.8 %).