A Study of Morphological and Phytochemical Characteristics of Iranian and Foreign Summer Savory (Satureja Hortensis L.) Accessions in Field Conditions

Summer savory (Satureja hortensis L.), belonging to the Lamiaceae family, is one of the most important medicinal plants. This plant is used in the wild and cultivated forms. In this study, the genetic diversity of 20 accessions of S. hortensis from different places of Iran and other parts of the world were characterized by morphological, phytochemical, and essential oil yield traits. The data was analyzed using univariate and multivariate analyses. The results of the analysis of variance showed a significant difference between the studied characteristics. The results of the morphological analysis showed that traits such as the leaf number, bract number, 100-seed weight, and seed number per plant were very diverse. Bulgaria and Uzbekistan accessions were best in most of the traits and essential oil yield was higher in Karaj accession. The correlation coefficients among traits showed that the plant diameter had the highest correlation with the leaf number trait (0.99) and leaf number had a significant positive correlation with all traits. Factor analysis indicated that the six factors explained 85.85 of the variability among the accessions. Cluster analysis divided the accessions into four major groups. Considering the grouping, there was no relationship between genetic diversity and the geographical distance of the accessions. The results confirmed a considerable genetic variation among S. hortensis accessions.