Intra-specific genetic diversity and chemical profiling of different accessions of Clitoria ternatea L.

Clitoria ternatea, commonly known as Shankhpushpi is an important drug of Ayurvedic medicine used for centuries as a memory enhancer, nootropic, antistress, anxiolytic, anticonvulsant, tranquilizing and sedative agent. In the present study, genetic variability and variation in Kaempferol, a chemical constituent in eleven accessions of C. ternarea collected from different regions of the country was assessed using 25 RAPD primers and HPLC analysis respectively. Only 7 primers amplified a total of 71 reproducible, clear and scorable bands of which 32(45%) were polymorphic. The number of RAPD bands per primer was in the range of 7-14 with an average of 10 bands per primer. The genetic distance ranged from 0.02 to 0.28. A dendrogram based on UPGMA clustering method revealed two major clusters. Cluster 1 comprises of the accessions of North India while cluster 2 includes accessions of Central and South India. The Kaempferol content was 9.31-20.01 mg/g dw, being highest in the accession of Kurukshetra (Haryana). (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.