ABSTRACT:
Asparagus racemosus, commonly called Shatatvari is a well known medicinal plant of Indian flora, which may be named as "female friendly herb" due to its effectiveness towards ailments related to female reproductive system. In addition, this plant also posses adaptogenic, antidiarrheal, antioxidant and antimicrobial properties. Numerous applications of this plant in various formulations have raised the demand of the plant leading to its overexploitation from its natural habitat. National medicinal plant board, New Delhi, India, has recognized this plant to be conserved and developed. Moreover, it is categorized as high trade species in Chhattisgarh state. Due to this, strategies for propagation and conservation are required to prevent the species being threatened. While designing strategies for ex-situ conservation the foremost task is to reveal the number of populations that should be preserved so as to circumvent most of the genetic diversity and to sustain quantitative genetic variation. The present study is focused on generating genetic diversity information about this species in this herbal state of Chhattisgarh. A total of 10 accessions were collected from six locations belonging to three different geographical zones of state. The samples were subjects to PCR amplification using 10 ISSR primers and analyzed by performing cluster analysis and principal component analysis. The observed data depicted 71.21% polymorphism. As the variation within the species is high more number of individuals from different populations needs to be conserved so as to preserve maximum genetic diversity of the species.