GENOMIC CONSTANCY DURING THE DEVELOPMENT OF LATHYRUS-ODORATUS CULTIVARS

The sweet pea, Lathyrus odoratus, has a well-documented history of the development of its cultivars in various parts of the world. Measureme nts of genome size, using flow cytometry, and observations on the kary otypes, as well as the analysis of meiotic pairing of F1 hybrids (betw een the wild sweet pea and two modern cultivars), all show that this d evelopment has not been accompanied by changes in karyotype or genome size. However, the cultivars do differ in pollen size and guard cell c hloroplast number, both characteristics that have been suggested to be controlled by the nucleotype; however, this is clearly not the case i n L. odoratus.