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The Many Types Of Curcuma

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Curcuma are highly important genus of Zingiberaceae mostly contain spice plants with very high medicinal value. Among them few species are being cultivated but majority of them are wild, endemic or endangered in nature. Therefore, these species are being depleted from nature due to extensive collection, biopiracy and habitat destruction. Curcuma longa have very well explore species but other two non-conventional species of Curcuma like Curcuma caesia and Curcuma aromatica species are still unknown due to their unavailability and extensive use by the tribal people for medicine as well as spice. Traditional methods based on phenotypic observations for identifying Curcuma varieties in Curcuma spp. are slow and have limitations. However, new …show more content…

The knowledge of genetic variability is a pre requisite to study the evolutionary history of a species, as well as for other intraspecific variation, genetic resource conservation etc. (Islam et al. 2007). Hence, genetic diversity and gene differentiation through molecular marker analysis are essential for their taxonomic relationship evaluation, conservation and sustainable utilization. For proper conservation programme it is essential to characterize the plants genetically. Number of molecular markers is being regularly used for studying genetic relations, population genetics, genetic characterizations in different plant groups and cultivars. The molecular markers are not influenced by the external environmental factor unlike that of morphological markers and hence accurately testify the genetic relationship between and among plant groups. Molecular markers like RAPD, ISSR and SSR are being used regularly for genetic diversity assessment as a thorough knowledge of the level and distribution of genetic variation is essential for conservation (Dreisigacker et al. 2005; Sharma et al. 2008; Naik et al. 2010; Das et al. 2011). PCR-based DNA fingerprinting techniques like RAPD, ISSR and SSR are proven to be very informative and cost-effective

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