Karyomorphological study on two local garlic cultivars (Allium sativum L.) from central Java, Indonesia

Tawangmangu Baru and Bawang Jawa are Javanese local garlic cultivars commonly planted in Central Java due to their strong flavour, short time to harvest 70 d to 80 d and resistant to Garlic Latent Viruses (GLC). However, a karyomorphological study on these local Javanese garlics have not been made. Therefore, the objectives of this study were to investigate chromosome variation and karyotype formula of the two local garlic cultivars. The method used in this research was a squash method. The karyotypic analysis revealed that the two garlic cultivars have a similar diploid chromosome number (2n = 16) but they have a different karyotype formula. The karyotype formula of Tawangmangu Baru is 2n = 16 = 12m + 4sm whereas Bawang Jawa is 2n = 16 = 14m + 2sm. The result also showed chromosome size divergence between the two garlic cultivars on the length of short (p) and long (q) arm chromosomes at chromosome pair number 8. In addition, the proportion of the longest chromosome relative length and the shortest chromosome relative length (R) of Tawangmangu Baru and Bawang Jawa were 1.57 and 1.69 respectively. This data revealed that chromosome size of Bawang Jawa has more variation compared to chromosome size of Tawangmangu Baru.