Vol. 8, Issue 5 (2019)

Author(s):
Loveneet Kaur, Manish Kapoor and Raghbir Chand Gupta

Abstract:
Polianthes Tuberosa L., commonly known as Tuberose is a promising bulbous aromatic plant that is highly valued for its flowers as well as mesmerizing fragrance that makes it highly demanded in global floral markets. There are 2 types of tuberose based on whorls, i.e. single and double with a number of varieties reported in India. There is a great confusion in the naming of tuberoses as all the single tepalled tuberoses are normally referred to as single tuberoses, and double tepalled cultivars are normally referred to as double tuberoses irrespective of the huge differences found among these different cultivars. Single tuberoses are comparatively more in demand due to their use in perfume industry owing to high level of concrete and absolute in single flowers as compared to double. So, proper keys or characters need to be identified, so as to study and identify these useful cultivars. Moreover as climatic conditions of Punjab are well suited for growing tuberose, there is a great potential of building a cut flower market for tuberose in this region. Cut flower industry is still in its infantry in Punjab and growers are unaware of the importance of different tuberose cultivars as per demand in both local and international market. Therefore there is a need to introduce different tuberose cultivars as a cut flower, source of essential oil and possibly more way towards export in this area. Looking to the potential of some tuberose cultivars there is a dire need to evaluate them under Punjab conditions. In the present studies, various morphological markers were used to study the variations found among seventeen different single tepalled tuberose cultivars under Punjab conditions. The studies were successful as satisfactory results were achieved and various morphological markers were identified, that can be successfully used to mark variations among various cultivars of tuberose in future on the basis of these morphological markers and even in conducting Distinctiveness, Uniformity And Stability (DUS) testing on different cultivars as these studies have not been conducted on Tuberose as yet under Punjab conditions. The analysis of data indicated that the cultivars did not differ significantly in a two traits i.e. leaf waxiness and flower colour. However, marked differences were seen in 24/26 characters, which makes these morphological markers of potential use for future research.