| dc.description.abstract | Black pepper is the most important of all spices used by
man. The source of this Spice is the dried mature
fruits of the perennial Climber, Piper nigrum L.
(Piperaceae), native of the humid evergreen forests of
the Western Ghats of South India. India iS a major
producer and exporter of black pepper, the annual export
‘earning being over Rs.3020 million. In spite of its
great economic importance, not much is known about black
Pepper and its related taxa occurring in the forests) of
Western Ghats. The present study is an attempt to fill
the gap existng in our knowledge on this important
genus.
Fourtyfour F.enigrim cultivars and 14 related taxa were
included in the present study. The studies were
confined to: (I) taxonomy (IT) morphology (III)
numerical taxonomy and (IV) Chemotaxonomy. In numerical
analysis Average linkage analysis was used for _ the
clustering of characters, centroid linkage analysis for
the clustering of taxa and also ‘factor analysis.
Twentytwao characters from black pepper cultivars and 3@
characters fram the related taxa were recorded and the
data were used in these numerical taxonomic analysis.
3dO
The numerical analysis was carried out at the Computer
centre of Carneige-Mellon University, USA, using the
BMDP 81 programme package developed by the University of
California, Los Angelas.
The chemotaxonomical Studies were restricted to the
flavonoid patterns and were analysed by paper
chromatography. | en_US |
