Loveneet Kaur, Manish Kapoor and Raghbir Chand Gupta

Tuberose (Polianthes tuberosa Linn.) occupies a very special position among various bulbous aromatic ornamental plants. It is highly valued for its loose flowers, cut flowers and its lingering fragrance, which makes it highly valued for use in perfumery industry and in manufacture of aromatic essential oils. Two types of tuberoses i.e. single and double type are reported in India with a number of cultivars. There is a huge confusion in the naming of tuberose, all the double tepalled cultivars of tuberose are normally referred to as double tuberose and all the single tepalled cultivars of tuberose are normally referred to as single tuberose and there is lacking of proper nomenclature of various double and single tuberoses found in different states of India. So, maintaining the purity of these different tuberose cultivars becomes primarily important in such a scenario. Here attempt has been made to mark the variations in these different cultivars of double tuberoses using various morphological markers. Eight double tepalled germplasm accessions were taken for the studies and were evaluated using twenty eight different morphological markers. The morphological characterization of nine cultivars depicted clear differences. The analysis of data indicated that the cultivars did not differ significantly in few traits like leaf waxiness, flower colour, flower type, rows of tepals and anthers while clear differences were recorded in eighteen floral characters and five foliage characters. The present study on these nine double tepalled cultivars successfully demonstrate that these double cultivars of tuberose differ significantly in 23/28 characters, which makes the present tools strong descriptors for characterizing tuberose genotypes and can be of help for future researchers. 

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