FLAVONOIDS AS AN AID IN CULTIVAR IDENTIFICATION AND ASSESSING PHYLOGENETIC KINSHIP AMONG SOME CULTIVARS OF POMEGRANATE (PUNICA GRANATUM L.)

Secondary metabolites, foliar flavonoids have gained reputation as being excellent phyto-chemical markers for cultivar identification. These markers come handy at places where the morphological parameters become limiting and hence recourse to such phyto-chemical markers is taken to delimit the taxon. Pomegranate is represented by a large number of cultivars which have been identified/developed for specific purposes. The genetic variability once generated has been fixed on account of vegetative propagation which is commonly practiced in this taxon. Varietal identification of these cultivars is based mostly on fruit characters. These at times become highly overlapping and hence pose a problem in varietal delimitation and assessing the phylogenetic kinship between the cultivars which is essential for a pre-breeding program. Accordingly, the present investigation was undertaken using nine cultivars of pomegranate to develop phyto-chemical markers for them using foliar flavonoid. The data thus generated have shown that distribution of flavonoid spots or spot com¬bination is specific for each cultivar which can be used not only for varietal identifica¬tion but also for assessing the phylogenetic kinship among pomegranate cultivars. Thus, pomegranate cultivar ‘Kabul’ could be identified by spot no. 9 whereas cultivars which could be identified by unique spot combination were ‘Mridula’ (18, 20 and 24), ‘Jodhpur Red’ ( 4, 14 and 18), ‘P-23’ (4, 14, 15 and 24) and ‘Ganesh’ (1, 3, 18 and 19).