Abstract

Medicinal and aromatic plants have a traditional history of use, with strong roles in cultural heritage, and in the appreciation of food and its links to health. Black caraway (Bunium persicum Boiss. Fedtsch) belonging to the family of Apiaceae, is an economically important medicinal and aromatic plant found naturally growing in dry temperate regions of Iran and some other areas. The present investigation assessed the genetic variability of its ecotypes from Iran by employing morphological markers and essential oil components. The samples were collected from fifteen locations of Iran and were planted for evaluating morphological characters and also, the essential oil were identified by gas chromatography (GC) and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC/MS) methods. Dendrogram of clustering with UPGMA algorithm and Euclidean distance separated 15 ecotypes to 5 main groups which in each group, ecotypes were same in geographical and habitat situation and biplot of PC1 and PC2 approved it. Principal components analysis (PCA) reduced the original 16 variables to 2 principal components that accounted for 95.83% of the total variance. The results of factor analysis showed that the first four factors mostly reflected most of the trait variations. Heritability of the morphological traits was high and the ecotypes exhibited the high genetic variations from the viewpoint of coefficient of variations. Based on our assessments, we showed high genetic variations for Iranian B. persicum germplasms.

Key words: Bunium persicum, genetic diversity, morphological markers, essential oil components, medicinal plant.