ANALYSIS OF RESPECTIVE CHROMOSOME NUMBERS AND KARYOTYPES OF 20 VARIETIES OF GENUS NELUMBO

This paper presents an analysis of the number and karyotype of the chromosome in each of 20 representative lotus varieties selected from the existing 128 wild and cultivated ones. It was found that all these varieties analysed were diploid, the respective basic numbers of their chromosomes were just the same, i. e. 8, 2n=16 and, seen from the morphological structure,the range of relative length and the centromere of the karyotypes were also roughly the same. It was also observed that the numbers and the positions of the satellites were different and deficiency occurred in each pair of the chromosome, which might have caused the structural variations of chromosome (including changes of its position), resulting in appearance of variety diviersity, such as different flower colours and different levels of petalody.