: Caralluma tuberculata is locally known as Pawaney/Pamenkey in Pashto, Chungan in Urdu and Bittercress in English. Bitter means an pleasant taste and cress refers to pungent tasting leaves. It belongs to Genus Caralluma and Species tuberculata. Botanically it is known as Caralluma tuberculata and is placed in Asclepiadaceae family. It is widely distributed in Pakistan in almost all the four Provinces but the most common in Balochistan and secondly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Caralluma tuberculata, an endangered plant is medicinally used to cure diabetes and to control accumulation. It is one of the most popular edible plants and is cooked as a vegetable used in preservers like chutneys and even eaten raw.
Caralluma tuberculata plants have a succulent stem, angular, up to 30 cm tall, flower in terminal cymes, pedicel late. Cepal ovate-lenceolate.Corola 8-9 mm in diameter, dark purple color and gradually tapering towards the tip.
Caralluma tuberculata produces flowers from March to mid summer. Seed is produced in pods containing up to 20 seeds per pod. Seed color is dark brown with hairs just like Auk seed. Naturally the plants like partial shade to light shade.
Table-V1: Showing mean values for different parameters as recorded in
response of Caralluma tuberculata propagation through cutting vrs. seed.
|
S.# |
Treatments |
Plant Height/Stick length (cm) |
No. of sticks/plant |
Stick Diameter (cm) |
Initial wt of cutting |
Final wt of cutting |
Difference in wt (gm) |
|
1 |
T1 |
20.7 |
2 |
6.1 |
4 |
16.5 |
13.5 |
|
2 |
T2 |
18.6 |
4 |
7.3 |
- |
- |
9.9 |
Results and discussion: Data presented in table –V2 is briefly discussed as follows.
Data given in table-V2 showed that Caralluma propagated through cutting was found superior to seed propagation in all respects such as stick length, No. of sticks and stick diameter. Regarding fresh yield T1(cutting) could produced 36% more yield as compared to seed propagation.
As per results propogaton from seed is a bit slow process as compared to propogaton from cutting.
