Patent Application
20160366805
The present invention is related to the development of a novel, distinct, khusinol rich, short duration, spread clump behavior plant type (clone) of vetiver (Chrysopogon zizanioides) obtained through recurrent selection in polycrossed population generated from the bulk of wild collections. The mass propagation of this clone is through vegetative multiplication using slips (3 to 6 month old stem with few roots), and hence this plant is genetically uniform and stable. This has unique spread clump growth behavior, not observed in other varieties and genotypes. The clone holds commercial advantage since the plant roots of desirable quality can be harvested after 6 months that contain high essential oil content (1% v/w), rich in Khusinol (45% v/v), not reported in any other variety and genotype.
Khus or Vetiver [Vetiveria zizaniodes (L.) Nash., syn. Chrysopogon zizaniodes (L.) Roberty; family Poacaeae], is a perennial, wildly growing aromatic plant occurring all across India in variable agro-climatic conditions. India is considered to be the center of origin of vetiver (Lavania UC (2008): Vetiver in India: historical perspective and prospective for development of specific genotypes for environmental or industrial application. In, Truong P (ed.) Proc First Indian National Vetiver Workshop: Vetiver system for environmental protection and natural disaster management, Cochin, India 21-23 Feb 1988, pages 40-47.
(http://www.vetiver.org/TVN_INDIA_1st WORKSHOP_PROCEEDINGS/Chapter%201-4.pdf). As such, a higher order of genetic diversity with respect to ecological/geographic adaptation, morphometric traits, reproductive behaviour and essential oil concentration and composition is found in the Indian subcontinent, followed by Indonesia (Lal RK (2000) Genetic variability and association analysis for yield and yield components in indigenous and exotic collections of vetiver (Vetiveria zizanioides (L.) Nash). Jour. Spices Aromatic Crops 9: 133-136.).
Roots of vetiver are the source of world famous “Khus oil” which has considerable value in essential oil industry. Indians were the first to recognize vetiver for its aromatic and medicinal uses, followed by its other cottage and environmental uses in India and elsewhere (Lavania UC (2003) Vetiver root oil, and its utilization. Pacific Rim Vetiver Network Technical Bulletin, No. 2003/1, 12 pages, Office of the Royal Development Projects Board, Bangkok, Thailand, Lavania UC, Lavania S and Vimala Y. 2004. Vetiver system ecotechnology for water quality improvement and environmental enhancement. Current Science 86:11-14, Lavania UC (2008): op.cit. http://www.vetiver.org/TVN_INDIA_1stWORKSHOP_PROCEEDINGS/Chapter%201-4.pdf). The total world production of khus oil is estimated to be 250-300 tonnes per year. In India, about 20-25 tonnes oil is produced annually, which is much below to meet even the indigenous demand of the oil for perfume, essence, attar and soap industries.
Two distinct morphological complexes of vetiver are found to inhabit spatially separated geographic regions in India: one in the north along the Indo-gangetic plains and adjoining areas mainly in the states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, and the other in the south along the east and west coasts of Indian peninsula in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamilnadu and Kerala. The two races are distinctly different. The north Indian wild types represented by “Bharatpur type” are profuse flowering high seed-setting having narrow leaves with vigorous roots producing low concentration superior quality laevorotatory root oil (ruh-khus or khus oil) and the south Indian “cultivated type” that are late and low flowering with high pollen sterility and non seed-setting with wider leaves producing low quality dextrorotatory root oil (vetiver oil) resembling Java vetiver (see, Lavania 2008). Depending upon the oil quality and free vetiverols, there could be a price difference of four fold between laevorotatory and dextrorotatory oils. The former mainly available in north Indian vetiver is considered to be superior quality (Lavania 2003).
Systematic cultivation of vetiver has been in practice in south India, mainly in Kerala (Thiruvambadi, Neyatunkara), Andhra Pradesh (East Godavari and Kurnool), Tamilnadu (Mettupalayam, Nilgiri and Coimbatore) and in small areas of Karnataka state. However, the Khus cultivation for profitability has been driven by increasing demand of its essential oil. As such, cultivation of vetiver has also been taken up in the Indian states of Uttar Preadesh and Bihar. However, its long duration (18 months) and poor root yields, variable oil content and quality and Khusinol (a desirable oxygenated sesquiterpine likened to Khusimol for its vetiverol characteristics) content just upto 10%, have hindered its acceptance among the farmers and perfume industry.
Extensive breeding efforts have been undertaken at various research centre in India, including CSIR-Central Institute of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants, Lucknow (India) to develop/identify suitable clones to produce homogenous population and uniform quality for its essential oil under vetiver cultivation (for details see Lavania 2008 for an overview), but the problem of long gestation period for crop under cultivation and quality of root-essential oil has long bothered the scientists.
The present invention i.e. CIMAP-KHUSINOLIKA, overcomes this problem to a large extent by reducing the crop gestation period just to six months, and at the same time realizing desired quality of essential oil rich in Khusinol. This clone could yield more than 1% essential oil concentration containing 45-50% Khusinol just after 06 months of planting. As a super-short duration clone, this plant type provides opportunities to suitably accommodate vetiver cultivation into existing cropping systems. It is worth emphasizing that in literature, the highest Khusinol in Chrysopogon zizanoides is reported to be 19.15% (Kirici S, Inan M, Turk M and Giray E. S. 2011. To Study of Essential Oil and Agricultural Properties of Vetiver (Vetiveria Zizanioides) in the Southeastern of Mediterranean. Advances in Environmental Biology 5: 447-451.). But this clone CIMAP-Khusinolika is distinct and unique from all the available clones, since it is endowed with highest amount of sesquiterpene “khusinol”, which is reported for the first time.
Khusinol is a sesquiterpene alcohol (with molecular weight 220), one among the group of 20 vetiverol sesquiterpene, found only in the essential oil of Vetiveria zizanoides contributes to pleasant aroma of vetiver oil along with khusimol and zizanol. Isolation of this sesquiterpenoid from a complex blend of vetiver essential oil is difficult. This is a cadinane-type compound (which usually used as wood protective probably due to some repellant properties) used as a starting material for the synthesis of compounds like khusinodiol. Additionally other compounds namely (+)-α-cadinol and iso-khusinol are also synthesized by using khusinol (Trivedi G. K., Wagh A. D., Paknikar S. K., Chakravarthi K. K., Bhatacharya S. C., Terpenoids—LXXVI: Transformation products from BF3-catalysed reaction of khusinol. Tetrahedron, 1966, 22(5), 1641-1649). Hence high khusinol is desirable in the essential oil of vetiver.
Primary objective of this invention was to develop a novel, distinct, short duration plant of vetiver which could be harvested in 5-6 months.
Another objective of this invention was to generate a plant with sufficient oil yield at par or more with other varieties (at least 1.0% or more).
In yet another objective of the invention was to have a genotype yielding root essential oil having higher amount of Khusinol (45 to 55%) i.e. higher over any other available variety and genotype.
Breeding history
Looking into the commercial importance of the vetiver oil obtainable from the roots of vetiver, extensive efforts have been made in India to develop improved varieties and clones in this essential oil crop (for an overview—see Lavania 2008). However, none led to the realization of a short duration plant type that could produce essential oil of superior quality. The development of the present clone fills this gap.
Method of Development of the plant clone ‘CIMAP-KHUSINOLIKA’
India is the centre of diversity of vetiver. Plant grows wild throughout India, more particularly in peninsular India and plains of central and northern India. In the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh its occurrence is quite profuse and huge amount of variation is noticeable in the wild populations. Therefore, an extensive population improvement programme was started to identify a genotype that could be suitable for cultivation under short duration fitting in cropping systems for production of its essential oil.
The clone ‘CIMAP-KHUSINOLIKA’ initially identified as strain “G-12” in the breeding population is a descendant from population improvement programme started in the cropping season of the year 2005-06 from bulk seeds of open-pollinated wild populations collected from Lucknow, Sitapur, Barabanki, Sultanpur, Raibareli, Fatehpur, Hardoi, Unnao and Kanpur of the state of Uttar Pradesh, India. For this breeding programme, a nursery was raised and 4000 plants were evaluated for high growth rate of root, essential oil content. In the year 2006-07, 200 best performing clones were evaluated in progeny row and after selection 10 elite clones were polycrossed (Open-pollinated elite lines were allowed to inter-mate each other in isolated polycrossing block). This bulked polycrossed seeds provided the base population for second cycle of recurrent selection and 100 best performing clones (oil content >1.00%) were selected. Out of these 40 top best performing clones were evaluated during year 2009-10 as IET (Table 1).
The selection was further narrowed down to 30 best clones and evaluated under multi location trials at eight different agro-climatic locations in year 2011-12 with five checks viz. ‘KS-I’, ‘Kesary’, ‘Gulabi’, ‘Dharni’ and ‘CIM-Vridhi’. The Clones 15 and 22 based on the results of multi-location trials were released for commercial cultivation under Indian conditions. Further, 5 selections namely, G3, G12, G15, G16 and G21 on the basis of their growth behavior with distinct morphology+4 Checks namely KS-1, Dharini, Kesari and Gulabi) were again evaluated during rainy/monsoon season (July) of year 2013for exploring the possibility of optimal oil yield under shortest duration and the observation on fresh root yield/plant and oil content had been recorded during December 2013 and the results are presented in table.2.
Of these selections, G12 was observed to be having highest Root: Shoot ratio (0.1478) and oil content (1.08% v/w). Another uniqueness of this plant was that the essential oil contains >45% Khusinol.
The new and distinct clone of Chrysopogon zizanioides ‘CIMAP—Khusinolika’ is suitable for cultivation as a short duration crop for its essential oil rich in ‘Khusinol’. The latter has value in perfumery as such as well as a potential substitute/alternative to ‘Khusimol’. The said clone is developed through recurrent selection in polycrossed progenies and possesses the following combination of characters:
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Kelly R. B. and Eber J (1972) A total synthesis of Cadin-4, 10(15)-diden-3a-ol: Structure of Khusinol. Can. J. Chem 50:3272-3275.
Kirici S, Ivan M, Turk M and Giray E. S. 2011. To Study of Essential Oil and Agricultural Properties of Vetiver (Vetiveria Zizanioides) in the Southeastern of Mediterranean. Advances in Environmental Biology 5: 447-451
Lal R. K. (2000) Genetic variability and association analysis for yield and yield components in indigenous and exotic collections of vetiver (Vetiveria zizanioides (L.) Nash). Jour. Spices Aromatic Crops 9: 133-136.
Lavania U. C. (2003) Vetiver root oil, and its utilization. Pacific Rim Vetiver Network Technical Bulletin, No. 2003/1, 12 pages, Office of the Royal Development Projects Board, Bangkok, Thailand.
Lavania U. C. , Lavania S and Vimala Y. 2004. Vetiver system ecotechnology for water quality improvement and environmental enhancement. Current Science 86:11-14.
Lavania U. C. (2008): Vetiver in India: historical perspective and prospective for development of specific genotypes for environmental or industrial application. In, Truong P (ed.) Proc First Indian National Vetiver Workshop: Vetiver system for environmental protection and natural disaster management, Cochin, India 21-23 Feb 1988, pages 40-47. http://www.vetiver.org/TVN_INDIA_1stWORKSHOP_PROCEEDINGS/Chapter%201-4.pdf
Martinez J, Rosa-Paulo T. V., Menut C, Leydet A, Brat P, Pallet D, Meireles M. A. A. (2004) Valorization of Brazilian vetiver (Vetiveria zizanioides (L.) Nash ex Small) oil. Jour Agric and Food Chemistry 52:6578-6584.
Mannual: Factual tips about Vetiver grass. ISBN 974-7772-49-3. Office of the Royal Development Projects Board, Bangkok, Thailand, pp. 103.
National Research Council (1993) Vetiver grass: a thin green line against erosion. National Academy Press, Washington, DC, pp.169.
Trivedi G. K., Wagh A. D., Paknikar S. K., Chakravarthi K. K., Bhatacharya S. C., Terpenoids—LXXVI: Transformation products from BF3-catalysed reaction of khusinol. Tetrahedron, 1966, 22(5), 1641-1649.
