Comparative Morphological Assessment of Lemongrass (Cymbopogon spp.) Cultivars for Oil yield, Chemical Composition and Quality Parameters under Southern region of India

Abstract

Lemongrass (Cymbopogon flexuosus) is an important perennial aromaticplant and natural source of citral that is used in the preparations ofvariousperfumes.In the present study, eight lemongrass cultivars wereevaluated for growth, herbage, and essential oil yield during 2018-2019inthe southern region of Karnataka, India. Results revealed that significantdifferences were noticed in the growth and yield parameters of eightlemongrass cultivars studied. The plant height and the number of tillersvaries, ranging from 108.47-136.75cm and 38.13-47.60, respectively.Significantly higher herbage yield (t/ha/year) was recorded in CIM-Shikar(24.25), followed by Krishna (22.50) and CKP-25 (20.72). The lowest herbageyield wasrecorded in the Cauvery cultivar. Essential oil content varied from0.70-1.35% (v/w) and essential oil yield varies from 133.56- 302.40 kg/ha/year in different cultivars. The amount of citral varied from 2.20% to 88.14%among eight lemongrass cultivars. The varieties arranged according to thecitral content as follows, Cauvery (88.84 ± 0.99) >Nima (88.57 ± 0.70)>CIM-Shikar (84.97 ± 4.08) >OD-19 (85.90 ± 0.59) >CIM-Suvarna (82.53± 1.10) >CKP-25 (81.84 ± 0.30) >Krishna (79.26 ± 0.44) >CIM-Atal (2.15± 0.07). CIM-Atal was superior in geraniol (88.92 ± 1.00%) compared tocitral (geranial and neral) content among lemongrass cultivars studied; thiscultivar may be a partial replacement/ substitute for geraniol rich essentialoil-bearing plant in the future. Overall, cultivar CIM-Shikar was superiorto other cultivars in terms of essential oil yield (302.40 kg/ha/year) andsuperior in citral content (84.97 ± 4.08).

DOI

https://doi.org/10.29321/MAJ.10.000564

Pages

1 -

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Copyright

© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Madras Agricultural Students' Union in Madras Agricultural Journal (MAJ). This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited by the user.

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