Investigation of seed germination, establishment and identification of different Thymus species available in Natural Resources Gene Bank of Iran

Thymus, belonging to Lamiaceae family, is one of the most important medicinal genera in Iran. It has many uses in food, health care, cosmetics and especially in pharmaceutical industries. This research was aimed to investigate the germination parameters and establishment of seedlings from different accessions of Thymus species(T. daenensis, T. fedchenkoi,
T. kotschyanus, T. lancifolius, T. migricus, T. pubescens, T. transcaspicus and T. vulgaris). All the accessions are stored in Natural Resources Gene Bank of Iran. The seeds of accession were son in pots using a completely randomized design with three replications. Data were collected for thousand seed weight, seed germination percentage, seed storage time, germination rate, vegetative growth rate (2, 4, 6 and 8-leaf stage and the emergence of lateral branches), and the establishment percentage of each accession was measured in greenhouse. Unknown accessions were identified after preparing the herbarium specimens. Results indicated positive and significant correlations between 1000-seed weight and germination percentage as well as between seedling establishment and germination percentage (p