1 Introduction Curcuma L. (Zingiberaceae) is an economically important genus, mainly distributed in South and Southeast Asia with many species extending to China, Australia, and the South Pacific. Recent estimates of its total species number vary from 50 (Larsen et al. 1998; Wu and Larsen 2000) to 120 (Leong-Škorničková et al. 2007) or more than 150 (Leong-Škorničková et al. 2023). Numerous new Curcuma species have been described in recent years (Chen et al. 2015, 2019, 2021; Luu et al.
