CIM-Suras: A menthol rich, erect growth habit, sucker producing and high yielding peppermint (Mentha piperita L.) variety

Peppermint (Mentha piperita L., Lamiaceae), is an essential oil-bearing crop cultivated in temperate and sub-tropical countries for perfumery and aroma industries. The plant is vegetatively propagated through runners derived from mother stalks of the plants, resulting in a low genetic base. Induced mutagenesis is a unique and supplemental breeding approach to overcome the limitations of a low genetic base. A few popular varieties, namely Kukrail, Tushar, Pranjal and CIM-Madhuras, have already been released for commercial cultivation. However, all of those have creeping growth habit, propagation only by runners, low oil content, low oil yield, and higher than 5% menthofuran content. Due to these drawbacks of previously released varieties, CSIR- CIMAP has used mutation breeding to develop a peppermint variety with erect growth habit, sucker-producing ability, and increased oil yield with high menthol and low menthofuran content. CIMAP/MPS-36, a half-sib seed progeny of variety Kukrail, served as the mother genotype for mutation breeding using different doses of gamma irradiation. A mutant, MPS-3633, was identified as a novel and promising mutant with a distinct quality of peppermint oil and released for its commercial cultivation in the name of variety CIM-Suras. CIM-Suras displayed novel and industrially useful characteristics, i.e. high menthol (68–78%) content with low menthofuran (0.2-0.8%) content, sucker generating, erect growth habit, flower-bearing and an increase in herb yield, oil content, and oil yield. This cultivar could be a sustainable solution to bottlenecks of already released peppermint varieties. Further, dementholisation (DMO) can be used as peppermint oil and to extract menthol from oil.