Journal of Environmental and Agricultural Sciences (JEAS). Zahoor et al., 2019. Volume 21: 29-37
Open Access – Research Article
Palynological Features of Medicinal Plants from Salt Ranges of Pakistan
Aneela Zahoor 1,*, Farooq Ahmad 1, Mansoor Hameed 1, Mehwish Naseer 1, Naila Irum 1
1 Department of Botany, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan
Abstract: Palynology is utilized for distinction and identification of various plants on the basis of their pollens that vary in quantitative as well as in qualitative structures. For this, medicinal plants were collected randomly from various sites of Salt areas. 33 plants belonging to 30 genera were selected and their locality, habitat, date of collection and inflorescence color were noted during collection visits and preserved in herbarium of Department of Botany, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan. Qualitative traits i.e., pollen shapes (both in equatorial and polar view), pollen types and presence of colpi, while quantitative features i.e., colpi width, length, number, exine thickness, polar and equatorial diameter, Polar/Equatorial ratio and pollen fertility were measured. Multivariate (cluster) analysis was used to assess relationship among diverse genera and species. In all species both qualitative and quantitative traits varied in one and in another respect that shows that these characters are vital in systematics and every species have its own pollen traits. Our study concluded that palynology can be useful in solving systematics problems. Each plant species has some unique morphological pollen characters, which can be further merged to extract generic and family level pollen traits. Exine ornamentation and sculpturing proved to be useful at generic and species level.
Keywords: Pollen, palynology, exine, colpi, systematics, taxonomy, medicinal plants, diversity
*Corresponding author: Aneela Zahoor: aneelazahoor.bot@gmail.com
Cite this article as:
Zahoor, A., F. Ahmad and M. Hameed. M. Naseer and N. Irum. 2019. Palynological features of certain medicinal plants from Salt Ranges of Pakistan. Journal of Environmental& Agricultural Sciences. 21:29-37.
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Copyright © Zahoor et al., 2019. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium provided the original author and source are appropriately cited and credited.
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