Abstract

Embelia ribes is a woody perennial forest climber that belongs to Rare Endangered and Threatened category.  Because of its economic importance of its seeds and great demand in the market of ayurvedic and pharmaceutical medicines tremendous pressure is being imposed on its natural populations. The present study is an effort to analyze the variability of juvenile plants of Embelia ribes grown from the seeds collected from different geographical regions of the southern part of Western Ghats of India. Statistically significant variability between the accessions was shown only by internodal length and the other characters under study showed only insignificant variations.  However, characters like number of tertiary branches, number of leaves per tertiary branches and epicuticular wax content showed some degree of variation.  The present study reveals that the level of variability expressed in the case of juvenile plants of Embelia ribes when grown and compared under uniform nursery conditions is very low and this observation points to the alarming situation that the level of genetic variability among Embelia ribes plants distributed in the Western Ghats region of Kerala state is very low and measures to improve the extent of variability should be initiated with the objective of enriching in situ diversity and developing germplasm of the plant in which all the available genotypes across its natural habitats are conserved.

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