Genetic Evaluation and Phytopharmacological Activity of Costus Pictus D Don

Abstract

Costus pictus, belonging to the family Costaceae, is one of the valuable medicinal plants. Despite ever-increasing demand from the pharmaceutical industry; this species is being less exploited at molecular level. In spite of its antidiabetic property, only limited information is available on the newlineagronomy, propagation, physiology, molecular, phytochemical and pharmacological characteristics of C.pictus. The medicinal, ecological, social and economic importance of this plant necessitates systematic evaluation of the plant. Hence, an effort have been made in the present study to newlinecharacterize the 15 accessions of C.pictus collected from different geographical regions of India for their morphology, genetic diversity and some of pharmacological activities. newline newlineGenetic diversity was assessed through random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) and inter simple sequence repeats (ISSR)markers. Total of 25 RAPD and 20 ISSR primers were used in the present study. The RAPD analysis generated 343 loci, of which 124 were polymorphic with an average of 4.96 loci per primer. While, ISSR primers produced 177 loci, of which 77 were polymorphic with an average of 3.85 loci per primer. The similarity coefficients ranged from 0.86 to 0.99, 0.84 to 0.95 and 0.86 to 0.96 for RAPD, ISSR and combined RAPD-ISSR, respectively. The UPGMA dendrogram generated using these data showed low level of divergence among the accessions from South and West regions. This investigation was an derstanding of genetic variation within the C.pictus accessions. It may be concluded that data of hereditary differences appeared among the C.pictus accessions could be utilized for their conservation and reproducing programs. newline newlineTheir qualitative traits are useful in characterization of accessions, as they show high heritability and stable morphological, physicochemical, phytochemical expressions and very low level of genetic diversity. newlinePlants are important sources of biologically active natural products, which differ widely in terms of their structures.