Quantification of Genotypic and Chemotypic Diversity for Elite Clone Selection with High-quality Essential Oil Traits in Vetiver [Chrysopogon zizanioides (L.) Roberty

Abstract

Vetiver (Chrysopogon zizanioides (L.) Roberty (Poaceae) is a perennial herbaceous grass. It is cultivated for the production of high-value essential oil, which imparts a robust and persistent woody odor escorted with different undertones such as earthy, grapefruit-like, flowery, smoked, ambery, etc. The study aims to determine the genotypic and chemotypic diversity in twenty-three genetic stocks of vetiver. The nature, proportion and degree of genetic diversity were evaluated using Mahalanobis D2-statistics on seven agro-economical quantitative traits. All the vetiver accessions were grouped into six clusters wherein, the inter-cluster distance was observed maximum in between I and III cluster pair (117.18) and minimum in II and IV cluster pair (64.98). Among seven economic characters, plant height (59.33 %) was found to be leading contributor toward genetic diversity, followed by essential oil yield (10.43 %). However, root length (2.77 %) showed the lowest contributing character towards genetic diversity. The genetic variability was also studied through percentage chemical constituents present in the essential oils. The result of the present study concluded to enhance the traits of auspicious OPSPs accessions, responsible for high oil yields with specific chemical constituents to meet the market demand of khus essential oil. The accession VS-20 and VS-23 were found to be highly divergent genotypes among all and could be chosen for further exploitation in the hybrid breeding program to develop superior cultivars of vetiver. The clones rich in specific constituent like khusinol (VS-9), khusimol (VS-11) and khusilal (VS-17) and high essential oil could also be selected for further exploitation.