Vetiver in India: Historical Perspective and Prospective for Development of Specific Genotypes for Environmental or Industrial Application

Vetiver is native to India, and has been in traditional use since ancient times for its perfumery oil obtained from roots. Also its hedges have been applied for contour protection since centuries. However, planned efforts to rehabilitate usar soils using vetiver plantations and organic soil amendments were initiated in 1956 by the National Botanical Garden, Lucknow (a national lab of CSIR, now known as National Botanical Research Institute) that showed that vetiver grass has exceptional ability to withstand extreme sodicity and alkalinity, could help improve soil fertility and facilitate ground water recharge. Scattered efforts have since been made to apply vetiver plantation in soil reclamation and conservation with the support of state governments in various parts of India. The World Bank initiated several projects in India in 1980s for systematic development of Vetiver Grass Technology (VGT), now popularly known as Vetiver System (VS) for watershed management, soil conservation and slope stabilization. However, in its homeland vetiver still remains the choice of industrialists for its valuable root oil, despite having potential for development of technologies for its multifarious applications. Vetiver is found occurring in India in wild state throughout tropical and sub-tropical plains, particularly along the riverbanks and over marshy lands. It has wide range of ecological distribution ranging from sandy seacoasts and swamps to plains and foothills, and also on the hilltops up to elevations of 800m in the Kumaun hills of Uttar Pradesh. Based on geographical distribution patterns and detailed chromosomal evolutionary parameters it is suggested that south Indian peninsula is the area of its primary center of origin from where it has diverged in two directions: (i) towards the north in the warm and dry northwest and the warm and humid eastcentral Indian plains, and (ii) towards south-east Asia and other parts of the world. Vetiver cultivars found outside south-east Asia are supposedly of south Indian origin having non / low seed-setting characteristics. Two distinct morphological complexes of vetiver are found to inhabit spatially separated geographic regions in India: one in the north along the Indo-gangetic plains and adjoining areas mainly in the states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, and the other in the south along the east and west coasts of Indian peninsula in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Kanataka, Tamilnadu and Kerala. The two races are distinctly different. The north Indian wild types are profuse flowering high seed-setting having narrow leaves producing superior quality of laevorotatory root oil (ruh-khus or khus oil) and south Indian cultivated types are low / late flowering, low/non seed-setting with wider leaves producing lower quality of dextrorotatory root oil (vetiver oil). Extensive work on evaluation of genetic diversity, genetic analysis, genetic improvement has been done on Indian vetiver at the Indian Agricultural. Research Institute, New Delhi, National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources, New Delhi, Central Institute of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants, Lucknow, CS Azad University of Agriculture and Technology, Kanpur, and Kerala Agricultural University's research station at Oddakali. A good number of superior clones, northsouth hybrids, artificial polyploids have been isolated for high productivity of essential oil and high value perfumery notes ranging from earthy-to-rosy-tosaffron odour. Depending upon the oil