Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Harun, Nidaa
• Shaheen, Shabnum
• Ahmad, Mushtaq
• Shahid, Muhammad Naveed

Titel

Light and scanning electron microscopy‐based foliar micro morphological tools for the identification of fodder grass taxa

Ist Teil von

• Microscopy research and technique, 2020-08, Vol.83 (8), p.953-978, Article jemt.23490

Ort / Verlag

Hoboken, USA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc

Erscheinungsjahr

2020

Quelle

Access via Wiley Online Library

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Fertile plain of Central Punjab Pakistan is rich with fodder grasses and from centuries the local inhabitants of this area have been using their regional grasses for ruminant feeding. However, they always faced difficulties in identification because of their overlapping vernacular names, more or less identical leaf shapes, indefinite variations in stem branching pattern, and reduced floral parts. Hence, the current study has provided a detailed and comprehensive micro‐morphological analysis of 53 ethnobotanical fodder grass taxa. A variety of quantitative and qualitative leaf epidermal micromorphological traits was studied and results reported epidermal characters like stomatal index, silica bodies, prickles, microhairs, hook cells as most diagnostic in delimitation of species, and genera. As stomatal index was 79% in Poa annua while in its closely related species Poa infirmai was 85%. Similarly, Cenchrus ciliaris can be differentiated from Cenchrus pennisetiformis on the basis of silica body shape as butterfly shaped in former and dumbbell shaped in later one. Moreover, prickles were present in Chrysopogon aucheri while absent in Chrysopogon zizanioides. Hence, overall this study declared that diversity and variations in foliar micromorphological characters are valuable and supportive in the identification of grasses at the specific and generic level. • The current research validates the utilization of foliar micromorphological characters for the identification of fodder grass taxa. Some of valuable foliar micromorphological characters like stomatal index, silica bodies, prickles, microhairs, and hook cells were regarded as taxonomically significant.