Morphological variations and co-relationships in seabuckthorn (Hippophae salicifolia) populations growing in cold desert Himalayas

The present study provides information on the morphological study of seabuckthorn population of Himachal Pradesh. H. salicifolia grows naturally along with two species of seabuckthorn namely Hippophae rhamnoides spp. turkestanica and H. tibetana.The study covers surveys conducted in Trans-Himalayan (Lahaul-Spiti and Kinnaur districts) and Himalayan (Shimla and Kullu districts) region of Himachal Pradesh, India. Fifty (23 female and 27 male accessions) accessions were studied in H. salicifolia growing in high altitude areas of Himachal Pradesh. The studies and model output revealed that riverside and slope are the natural habitat of H. salicifolia and adapted between the 1900-3300 m asl in Himachal Pradesh. The variation of plant height, leaf length and width, fruit size, and seed size can thus be considered as a balance between competition with other plants and the adaptation to its physical environmental conditions such as nutrients, drought, cold, and winds. In Hippophae salicifolia, height of female plants ranged from 170-890 cm and male plant from 112-760 cm. Leaf length in female accession ranged from 5.05-11.87 cm and in male from 4.70-9.92 cm. Fruit length varies from 6.49-9.37 mm and width 5.61-8.65 mm. In populations, plant height (r=-0.337, p<0.02, n=50) and leaf length (r=-0.210, p<0.05, n=50) decreased with the increase of altitude. The leaf width (r=0.735, p<0.001, n=50) and petiole (r=0.640, p<0.001, n=50) depend upon the length of leaves. It is noticed that fruit width (r=0.874, p<0.001, n=23) depend to the fruit length of the accessions. It has been observed that plant height and leaf length decreased with an increasing the altitude and petiole of the leaf depends on the length of the leaf. There is no clear trend in fruit size in relation to altitude, although in general it increased with altitude. The length of peduncle shows directly proportional relation to the length of fruit. Seed length depends on the fruit length. This variation manifests at the morphological, cytological, ecological and molecular levels. Custer analysis revealed that populations of Hippophae salicifolia studied from the Lahaul valley have been morphologically different from the accessions studied in the Kullu and Kinnaur districts of Himachal Pradesh. Accession of Hippophae salicifolia studied in the Tinno and Kardang villages are best for the commercially cultivation, because it bears few thorns and have bigger fruit size (28-32g /100 fruit).