Phenotypic and RAPD diversity among Cymbopogon winterianus Jowitt accessions in relation to Cymbopogon nardus Rendle

The species Cymbopogon winterianus Jowitt is believed to have originated fr om the well-known species Cymbopogon nardus, type Maha Pengiri, referred to as Ceylonese (Sri Lankan) commercial citronella. Cymbopogon winterianus Jo witt was named after Winter, who raised its population as a separate specie s in the 19th century. C. winterianus was introduced into Indonesia and bec ame commercially known as the Javanese citronella. The Javanese type C. win terianus material was introduced into India for the commercial cultivation of this crop during 1959. Varieties of this species have been developed lat er by the use of breeding procedures from the same introduced material. A c omparative analysis of yields of herb, oil percentage and oil constituents for eight prevalent C. winterianus cultivars comparing them between themsel ves as well as against an accession of C. nardus has been carried out. All these accessions were analyzed at the molecular level for the similarity an d genetic distances through RAPD profiling, using 20 random primers. More t han 50% divergence was observed for all the C. winterianus accessions in re lation to C. nardus accession CN2. The clustering based on the similarity m atrices showed a major cluster of six accessions, consisting of two sub-clu sters. The accession C. nardus CN2 got carved out along with two C. winteri anus accessions, CW2 and CW6. On the other hand, the accessions CW2 and CW6 demonstrated distinct identities compared to CN2 at the DNA level.