Research Projects

The genus Embelia consists of approximately 150 species distributed predominantly in the old-world tropics. The exact number of species is disputed due to several taxonomic complexities resulting from the high diversity and variation in floral forms observed within this genus. Twenty species of Embelia are reported from India, out of which, 10 species are known from Peninsular India, 7 species from the Himalayan region, and 3 species from Andaman & Nicobar Island. Amongst the overall 20 species, E. tsjeriam-cottam is one of the widely distributed species which shows a lot of variation in vegetative and reproductive morphology, due to which it is considered as conspecific to E. robusta by Clarke (1882), Cooke (1904), and Gambel (1912). Similarly, E. basaal and E. viridiflora are considered to be distributed in Peninsular India, but the identity of the taxon is ambiguous. Moreover, most of the species included in the studies by Clarke (1882) are known only by their type collection. For example, E. gardneriana Wight (1848) an endemic taxon first described from Sispara, Kerala has not been collected later and was included in various studies based on type collection. The lack of understanding of the species boundaries has also resulted in a gap of knowledge in the geographic distribution of the species in India. This shows the necessity to revise and revisit the taxonomy, nomenclatural, and distribution issues for the group. Moreover, the genus Embelia is known for its medicinally important metabolites, like embelin and its derivatives, embeliol, 5-Omethyl embelin, and vilangin. They have proven potential applications as an anthelmintic, antipyretic, and antimicrobial agents. Unfortunately, except for the targeted study of two species E. ribes and E. tsjerima-cottam, presently no reports are available on metabolite profiling of the genus Embelia. Hence, the broad objective of this project is to gain insights into the systematics, evolution, and metabolite diversity of Indian Embelia using an integrated approach. Objectives 1. Taxonomic revision of species from the genus Embelia with morphological characterization from India. 2. Deriving evolutionary species relationship of genus Embelia based on molecular data. 3. Metabolite profiling and characterization of Embelia species from India.