Genomic constancy during the development of lathyrus odoratus cultivars

Abstract

The sweet pea, Lathyrus odoratus, has a well-documented history of the development of its cultivars in various parts of the world. Measurements of genome size, using flow cytometry, and observations on the karyotypes, as well as the analysis of meiotic pairing of Fj hybrids (between the wild sweet pea and two modern cultivars), all show that this development has not been accompanied by changes in karyotype or genome size. However, the cultivars do differ in pollen size and guard cell chloroplast number, both characteristics that have been suggested to be controlled by the nucleo- type; however, this is clearly not the case in L. odoratus. © 1992 The Genetical Society of Great Britain.