Chromosome analysis of cayenne pepper (Capsicum frustescens L.) in colchicine induced mutation

The demand for cayenne pepper is constantly increasing with the growth of the food industry, pharmaceuticals, and cosmetics use, which needs to be accompanied with efforts to increase the production. One effort that can be done is to improve the quality of fruit by mutation breeding using colchicine mutagen induction. Colchicines are an alkaloid that affects microtubule synthesis, and cause doubling of the chromosomes number (polyploidy). Therefore this research aimed to detect polyploidy in cayenne pepper plants (Capsicum frustescens L.) as a results of mutation induction with colchicine. The seed of three genotypes of local cultivars of cayenne pepper were soaked in colchicine with the concentration of 0.00% (K0), 0.015% (K1) and 0.025% (K2) for 6 hours. Chromosomes were observed in root tip of eight days old seedings using squash technique and stained using acetoorcein. Ploidy analysis showed that genotype III concentration of 0.015% showed 2n lowest percentage at 13%. The concentration of 0.015% on the chili was able to induce triploids at 60%. Besides inducing triploid plants, colchicine was also able to induce polyploidy such as, tetraploid and mixoploid. Colchicine treatment did not significantly affected tetraploid whereaas chromosome mixopolid was significantly affected at the concentration of 0.015%. The results of this study indicated that the treatment of colchicine was able to induce polyploid in cayenne pepper plants. Polyploids found in this study were triploid (2n = 3x = 36), tetraploid (2n = 4x = 48), and mixoploid (2n = 2x = 24, 2n = 3x = 36 and 2n = 4x = 48).