The Genetic and Phytochemical Diversity of Four Populations of Lemongrass (Cymbopogon olivieri) from Southeast Iran

Lemongrass (Cymbopogon olivieri) is highly cross-pollinated and fragrant herb plant. Because of so worthy essential oil components, it is widely used in cosmet- ics, food, and medicine industry. The C. olivieri leaves of 4 populations were sampled from South and Southeast Iran. Random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) markers used to assess the population structure and genetic variation. In total, 32 polymorphic bands amplified from 11 effective chosen RAPD markers. Cluster analysis using UPGMA method divided the populations into 2 main groups. A high cophenetic correlation coefficient (r = 0.90) was obtained. The pale yellow essential oils were used for GC-MS analysis. Pipertone, carrene, elemol, limonene, benzene, α-pinene, linalool, azulene and calarene were the components with the highest amount found in this study. The high genetic and phytochemical diversity among studied C. olivieri population was observed which could be applied in fol- lowing breeding and gene bank conservation programs.