| Summary: | Caladium were popular as an ornamental plank that grown for their colorful foliage. The plants had variation in color, shape and size of leaves. This showed genetic variation in Caladium plant. Genetic variation was an essential factor in plant breeding program. Commonly, identification of genetic variation of Caladium bicolor was carried out primarily on morphology characters. However, there were found small number of comprehensive references that made difficulty in identification of Caladium cultivars. This condition made breeding programs on Caladium became taking relatively long time.
This study aimed to find the differences in chromosomal structure of five G bicolor cultivars. Slide preparation of root tips was carried out according to aceto-orcein squash method (Armstrong, 1995). Observations were recorded on chromosome morphology, that was number, length of long and short arm, absolute length, and arm ratio. The data were analyzed using Adobe photoshop 6.0 and CorelDraw 10 program to obtain karyogram and idiogram.
All cultivars had the same number of chromosome i.e. In = 30. Cultivar II and cultivar IV had a pair of heteromorphic chromosomes. Absolute chromosome length of cultivar I was 1,96 - 6.56 um, cultivar II was 1.82 - 5.98 um, cultivar IE was 1.53 - 5.45 um, cultivar IV was 1,6$ -5,55 um and cultivar V was 1.90 - 5.77 um. There were differences in karyotype formula on Caladium bicolor cultivars. Cultivar I had karyotype formula 4M + 12m + 8sm + 4st + 2t, cultivar II was 17m + 4sm + 6st + 3t, cultivar III was 14m + 2sm + lOst + 4t, cultivar IV was 18m + 4sm + 2st + 6t and cultivar V was 4M + 12m + 8sm + 4st + 2t. It was suggested that the differences in karyotype related to phenotypic differences such as color and color pattern of leaves in five C. bicolor cultivars.
Keywords: genetic variation �karyotype�Caladium
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