Abstract

In this study karyotype and chromosome characteristics of the nine accessions ofAegilops crassa species obtained from gene bank of Seed and Plant Improvement Research Institute (SPII) of Iran and one accession collected by authors were inspected. Aceto-iron-hematoxilin staining method was used to stain chromosomes. For each accession, chromosome characteristics including long and short arms, chromosome lengths, arm ratio index and relative chromosome lengths were measured using micro measure 3.3 software. Results revealed that all of the studied accessions were tetraploid (2n = 4x = 28) and consisted of 13 pairs of metacentric and one pair of submetacentric chromosomes, of which two pairs were satellite chromosomes. Karyotype formula for these accessions were 13 m + 1 sm. Arm ratio index value of chromosomes ranged from 1.11 in chromosome number 6 to 1.77 in chromosome number 12. The B chromosomes were not seen in any of the accessions. Karyological characteristics of theseaccessions were similar to each other. However, some differences were observed between the accessions in some chromosome characteristics.

Key words: Aegilops Crassa, karyotype, aceto-iron-hematoxilin staining, satellite chromosome.