CYTOGENETICAL AND BIOCHEMICAL EVALUATION OF DIFFERENT GENOTYPES OF STEVIA PLANTS USED AS A NATURAL SWEETENER

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Dept. of Biology Fac. Of Education, Elmajmaah Univ., Saudi Arabia.

2 King Saud Univ., Fac. of Sci., Dept. of Botany and Micro., Al Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Abstract

Seven Stevia (Stevia rebaudiana Bertoni) genotypes were investigated in this work. In order to achieve such a purpose, chromosome behavior at mitosis as well as at meiosis, pollen fertility, their content of the amino acid proline, and some agronomic traits were precisely studied. The obtained results showed that the chromosome number is 2n=22 as mitotic examination revealed and 11 bivalents as indicated by meiosis were observed at diakinesis . number of branch ranged from 4 to 12, plant height from 8.3 to 28.6 cm and number of leaves ranged from 9.3 to 17.2, Number of heads ranged from 1.1 to 4.2. The amino acid proline ranged from 1.18 to 8.2 mg/g dry leaves. Stickiness of chromosomes and presence of 2-3 nucleoli / cell might be indicated that this genotypes are a result of polyploidy. 

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