Conservation efforts on threatened Angelica glauca Edgew.: assessing its gap for population and niche modelling studies in the North-western Himalayas, India
摘要
The Angelica glauca Edgew. is one of the most important native, endemic, and threatened medicinal species of Indian north western Himalayan region, which is in its great demand. This constant demand leads towards over-exploitation and habitat loss in their natural habitats. The present study aimed to assess the population status, habitat suitability, and morphological variation of A. glauca for its conservation. Overall, seventeen sites were surveyed for population assessment, and morphological studies in their natural habitats. Likewise, dominance was recorded at the altitude between 3001 and 3600 m amsl, which showed the highest population density (2.84 Indiv./m2). Similarly, maximum dominance with density (2.63 Indiv./m2) and frequency (61.25%) was found in the dense shady moist forest habitat. We further attempted characterisation studies of important morphological traits for the generation of basic information about the wild populations. Moreover, by using the Ecological niche modeling technique, the model showed significance accuracy (AUC test = 0.889 ± 0.081 and TSS value = 0.877 ± 0.0016), and identified the 4.62% area of Himachal Pradesh State as high suitable for its distribution. Furthermore, germplasm accessions were experimented at ‘Centre for High Altitude Biology Lahaul & Spiti (HP) India’. We characterised the varied accessions which revealed that the Shillaru was a low altitude accession exhibited the maximum significant variations in most of the morphological parameters in the dry temperate region. The high heritability but low genetic advance in traits like plant height, leaf length, and root diameter indicated that environmental factors played a major role towards the occurrence of variations. These findings highlighted the need for continuous conservation effort towards sustainability of A. glauca in the future.