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Abstract
Homalomena aromatica Schott. is an important aromatic species used for various purposes like ethnomedicinal, pharmaceutical applications, flavour, and perfume industries. The present study aimed to identify high and stable essential oil-rich accession from collected germplasm of H. aromatica. During the year 2014, a total of 49 germplasm were collected from different parts of NE India. All the collected germplasm were planted in the year 2015 with three replications in Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) at the experimental farm of CSIR-NEIST, Jorhat. The same accessions were again planted during 2017 with the same design. All the agronomical and essential oil data were recorded and analyzed. Based on two crops season (2015-16 and 2017-18) of the selection trial, a new essential oil (1.20 %) rich strain (HA-18) with a high dry rhizome yield of 1454.53 kg/ha/crop season was selected. The identified accession was later renamed as Jor Lab SM-2. The stability of the identified germplasm (HA-18) was confirmed by testing in a multilocation trial at four different locations for two years i.e., one crop season (2019-2020) along with two check varieties. The stability analysis (biometric methods) for the economic character like dry rhizome yield, essential oil % and total essential oil yield/ha showed high mean value and were stable in all the four locations with βi=1.05, βi=1.09, and βi=1.14 respectively. The GC/MS profiling of the essential oil isolated from the rhizome of H. aromatica revealed linalool (66.27 %) as a major compound followed by α-cadinol, tau-muurolol, linalool oxide, neointermedeol, and 3-carene as other compounds. The stable variety Jor Lab SM-2 was found to be more than twice superior compared to the check varieties in terms of essential oil yield. All the studied traits of Jor Lab SM-2 were significantly and distinctly higher than the check varieties. As per our knowledge, no essential oil-rich variant of H. aromatica is reported so far; therefore this is the first report on the identification of a superior and stable line of H. aromatica.