title: Chemical and morphological variations of Panax notoginseng and their relationship.
abstract: A collection of 70 randomly selected three-year-old Panax notoginseng plants was analyzed to evaluate the germplasmic resources of cultivated notoginseng. The results obtained indicated that the individual plants of P. notoginseng were greatly diversified not only in saponin contents, but also in morphological features. It was further proven that, after hundreds years of cultivation, notoginseng has become a mixed farm cultivar with very large variations occurring. This high variance in saponin contents implies the possibility for breeding of this medicinal plant in order to obtain cultivars with higher saponin production. Statistic analysis of correlation between morphologic variation and chemical variation suggests that some morphological characters, such as root weight, plant height and peduncle length, can be correlated with saponin contents and can be used as important selective traits for selective breeding.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Phytochemistry and Plant Resources in West China, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanhei Road 132, Kunming 650201, China.
authors.forename: Dong
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Hwee-Ling
authors.initials: HL
authors.lastname: Koh
authors.forename: Yan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Hong
authors.forename: Hong-Tao
authors.initials: HT
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.forename: Min
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.forename: Ying-Jun
authors.initials: YJ
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Chong-Ren
authors.initials: CR
authors.lastname: Yang
mesh_terms: D015394:Molecular Structure; D053723:Panax notoginseng / Q000033:anatomy & histology* / Q000737:chemistry*; D012503:Saponins / Q000032:analysis*
chemical_list: D012503:Saponins
keywords: Araliaceae; Panax notoginseng; Phenotype; Relationship; Saponin; Variation