Harnessing the Benefits of Jute as Potherbs

Abstract

Demand for unconventional potherbs is increasing and known medicinal values or high content of Vitamin A or protein or Vitamin C will help jute to be equally popular as cheap sources of these. Walking on the paths of age-old belief on utilization of Jute as pat shak or potherbs (plant parts like leaves, flowers, stems, etc, that can be used in cooking or seasoning and flavouring) in some confined areas of India, the present study was undertaken with five varieties each of oilitorius and capsularis grown in teaching Farm Mondouri, BCKV in Randomised Block Design (RBD) with four replications during 2018- 2019 (4 rows of 4 m each) following recommended agronomic practices. Planting was done in first week of april month and were harvested after one month. Biomass traits like leaf length (cm), number of leaves per plant, leaf width (cm), petiole length(cm),  plant height (cm), weight per plant (gm) were recorded along with an estimation of Vitamin A, Vitamin C and protein content in the leaves. In olitorius heritability was moderately high in all the traits except a number of leaves along with moderate Genetic Advance as per cent of Mean (GAM) for Leaf length. Fresh weight indicates that this may be due to additive gene effects and selection for these types of traits may be always rewarding.  In capsularis heritability was moderately high for all traits except for the leaf length along with moderate GAM for petiole length and fresh weight indicates that this may be due to additive gene effects and selection for these types of traits may be rewarding. JRO 524 recorded high biomass yield along with high content of vitamin A (6950 IU (approximately 40 % of carrot) can serve as a cheap source of Vitamin A in the northeast provinces where it can be successfully taken as a vegetable as it happens to be one among the twenty-five popularly cultivated leafy vegetables (shaks) in West Bengal. Young jute leaves are flavorful and tender are rich in betacarotene, iron, calcium, and Vitamin C.  Criteria of selection for improvement of yield can be taken in terms of wt g per 10 plants as suggested in capsularis and both wt of leaves and petiole size and no of leaves in case of olitorius. Also it can be stated that the traits like no of leaves and Leaf length are more affected by environmental variations in case of olitorius and the trait like plant height in case of capsularis. JRO 524 recorded high biomass yield along with high content of vItamin A (6950 IU approximately 40 % of carrot) can serve as a cheap source of Vitamin A in the northeast provinces where it can be successfully taken as a vegetable.