CYTOGENETIC CHARACTERIZATION OF THE GERMPLASM OF WILD CHILI PEPPERS: CAPSICUM RHOMBOIDEUM

AGUILERA P.M.; DEBAT, H. J.; SANCHEZ-GARCIA Y.; MARTÍ, D. A.; GRABIELE M.

TAXON

INT ASSOC PLANT TAXONOMY

Lugar: Viena; Año: 2014 vol. 6 p. 1 - 3

0040-0262

Capsicum rhomboideum is a diploid, based on x = 13 wild chili pepper that naturally inhabits in México, Guatemala, Honduras, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador and Perú. This taxon grows as a shrub or a small tree with rotate and particularly yellow flowers, spherical red sweet fruits and brownish seeds. An exhaustive cyto-molecular description of C.rhomboideum was performed by means of diverse approaches. In combination, these cytological markers permitted to distinguish unequivocally each chromosome pair of this species. Polymorphisms for the cytological markers were not detected. Our results, coupled to previous studies on the karyotype of C. rhomboideum sustain an ancestral state for this species in the phylogeny of Capsicum. In addition, molecular studies on the 5S rRNA NTS sequence and the particular red nonpungent sweet fruits of C.rhomboideum clearly corroborate its ancestral condition.