Quantification of β-carotene, aucubin content, their associations and contribution to other economic traits in Plantago germplasm

Plant secondary metabolites have innumerable benefits in regard to human health. From the available 106 divergent lines of five Plantago species, a screening program was conducted to explore putative lines having best resources of aucubin and β-carotene. HPLC results indicated that seeds of selection LP3 of P. ovata contained the highest (9.53%) and P. arenaria contained the least amounts (7.79%) of β-carotene. An investigation was also conducted to assess the genetic variability, correlations and character contribution of β-carotene and aucubin content with other traits towards seed yield in a set of ten selected accessions in relation to seven traits in Plantago species. Results indicated that none of the accessions of any other species apart from P. lanceolata contained aucubin. PL-61 accession was detected to have maximum concentration (0.23%) of aucubin while the lowest (0.02%) was detected in PL-66. This opened the possibilities for nutritional value addition of β-carotene in seeds of isabgol.