Studies on Black Pepper (Piper nigrum L.) and some of its wild relatives

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.