Morphological Variation Assessment in Different Accessions of Plectranthus forskohlii (Willd) Briq. from South India

The genus Plectranthus belongs to the family Lamiaceae is found in wild and cultivated condition. In the present work, the cultivars of Plectranthus forskohlii have been collected from Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka at different places. The accessions collected from Karnataka showed high tuber size, length and volume when compared to accessions collected from Tamil Nadu and Kerala. The most significant observation was made in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu cultivar accessions which were grown in the same soil in field condition have much branched root tuber with significant fresh weight as compared with accessions from Kerala. The Kerala accessions were observed with less diffused root tuber with low fresh weight. On the basis of the present research, it was concluded that the phenotypic variations present in leaf, stem and root characters might be due to some genetic heritable variation which may exist in the accessions collected from different locality, and this require further study with respect to their genotypic nature of Plectranthus forskohlii.