Genetic Resources of Spices

Spices play an important role in preservation, colouring and flavoring of food, cosmetics and medicine. India is the center of diversity for spices like black pepper, ginger, cardamom, turmeric, cinnamon, tamarind and has good collection of diverse germplasm. In introduced crops like nutmeg, clove, allspice, vanilla, seed and herbal spices though India has reasonable germplasm holdings the diversity is limited especially for quality and resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses. Introducing germplasm from the centers of diversity for general and specific characters is an important aspect to be considered in the latter group of crops.