Molecular Analysis and Phytochemical Profiling to Explore the Diversity of Garcinia Species Collected from Western Ghats of India

Abstract

Hydroxycitric acid made the genus Garcinia economically important. Genetic and chemical diversity has been studied in Garcinia species using molecular markers, HCA and antioxidant activity. Nine species were collected and screened for molecular diversity and six were subjected to analyse antioxidant and HCA content and its interspecies variability. A total of 129, 125 and 89 bands with polymorphism of 78.74%, 78.4% and 93.36% were obtained using ISSR, RAPD and EST-SSR, respectively. The average PIC value obtained with ISSR, RAPD and EST-SSR markers was 0.9161, 0.9440 and 0.8903, respectively. Determined HCA content by HILIC-HPLC system using 0.1% orthophosphoric acid and acetonitrile (30:70) as mobile phase in fruit powder of various Garcinia species was found to be significantly different. G. gummi-gutta, G. indica and G. xanthochymus are rich of HCA containing 12.44±1.04%, 7.92±0.83% and 6.3±0.286%, respectively. G. morella, G. talbotii and G. celebica contained very negligible amount of HCA, 0.023±0.012%, 0.083±0.034% and 0.34±0.013%, correspondingly. G. talbotii showed high antioxidant capacity (95.40±0.720). Below that G. indica and G. xanthochymus were showing significant amount of total phenols (1.23±0.015 and 1.07±0.008), flavonoids (11.17±0.075 and 12.35±0.219) and antioxidant activity (90.73±0.976 and 91.37±0.854). Correlation analysis found significant association between molecular and chemical variation indicating influence of genetic background on the observed HCA and antioxidant profiles. The conducted analysis showed the most distinct species at the genetic and chemical levels were G. gummi-gutta, G. indica and G. xanthochymus. This study signifies the utility of molecular and chemical fingerprints for commercial exploitation of HCA from Garcinia species.