Morphological variations of 20 lemongrass accessions

Abstract

Lemongrass (Cymbopogon citratus Stapf) is an aromatic plant, has important benefits in the food, pharmaceutical, and cosmetic industries. Lemongrass is often used as a spice in traditional Indonesian dishes. Its essential oil has a strong aroma and compounds that function as fungicides, anthelmintics, insecticides, and antimicrobials. This study aimed to identify genetic variations among 20 accessions of lemongrass based on morphological character. The result showed that there was morphological variation among accessions of lemongrass. Analysis of genetic variation from morphological characters with dendrogram showed that accessions were divided into three groups at the similarity of about 70%. CICI 0001, CICI 0002, CICI 0005, CICI 0006, CICI 0008, CICI 0009, CICI 0015, CICI 0016, CICI 0017, CICI 0018, CICI 0019 and CICI 0020 were in group I; CICI 0003, CICI 0004, CICI 0007, CICI 0011, CICI 0012, CICI 0013 were in group II, and CICI 0014; and there was only CICI 0010 at group III. The CICI 0003 accession had good performance based on morphological characteristics, namely plant height, canopy width, stem diameter, stem height, leaf blade length, leaf length and total stem weight per clump. CICI 0003 and CICI 0015 have good morphological characters with the farthest genetic distance.