Karyological studies in Vicia amphicarpa sensu lato

Abstract

Cytological studies were carried out on twenty four amphicarpic wild populations of Vicia sativa group from different sites (19 from Spain, 4 from Syria and 1 from Turkey). Morphologically, 19 accessions can be attributed to taxon Dorthes and 5 to V. angustifolia subsp. pseudoangustifolia (Rouy) Tardío, comb. nov. In our studies, these two taxa show different chromosome numbers, V. amphicarpa Dorthes, has 14 chromosomes, while V. angustifolia subsp. pseudoangustifolia has only 12. Furthermore, the form of the chromosomes in the karyotypes of both taxa is quite different. The chromosome number and the morphology of the karyotype found in the first taxon agree with most of previous reports on V. amphicarpa, with a very characteristic short metacentric and six acrocentric chromosomes, one of them satellited. However, the second taxon has a very different karyotype with three large chromosomes, one of them submetacentric and another satellited, plus another three chromosomes which are significantly smaller. Therefore, we can conclude that within the genus Vicia, at least two amphicarpic taxa exist, clearly differentiated, both in morphological and karyotypical characteristics.