Reassessment of Mentha Species from River Kunhar Catchment : Identification of Mentha on the base of Morphological and Molecular Markers

The genus Mentha includes perennial herbs, generally cultivated for their essential oils used for medicinal and aromatic purposes. The number of species in the genus Mentha has been a matter of confusion due to high polymorphism in morphology and great diversity in essential oil composition. Previously the Mentha collections have been classified on morphological traits in Pakistan. This thesis is the first documented report of using molecular as well as numerical techniques for dissecting Mentha specimens collected from Kunhar River catchment of Hazara region. For numerical analysis twenty two morphological traits were used. Dendrogram analysis of morphological traits assorted the 25 Mentha collections into 4 groups viz, Group-A,B, C and D, corresponding to 4 species of the genus. Molecular analyses were carried out through 11 RAPD based primers. Dendrogram analyses based upon the genetic distance estimates conferred the cluster analysis of the morphological traits.It was found that population's No. 8 and 9, collected from Kaghan and Mahandri, were most distantly related as compared to population No. 10 and 20 collected from Balakot and Darmundi, respectively.