Somatic chromosomes of some Coffea species

Complex evolutionary history of coffees revealed by full plastid genomes and 28,800 nuclear SNP analyses, with particular emphasis on Coffea canephora (Robusta coffee)

“…Psilanthus and Coffea species are diploids (Bouharmont, 1963;Louarn, 1972) with a chromosome number of x=11 and a total genome size ranging from 460 to 900 Mbp (Noirot et al, 2003, Razafinarivo et al, 2012, with the exception of Coffea arabica. To date, the only known natural polyploid species is C. arabica, an allotetraploid recently originated (Yu et al, 2011) from two diploid progenitors: C. canephora and C. eugenioides as the maternal progenitor (Lashermes et al, 1999).…”

Cytogenomics in Coffea L.

“…Due to these karyotype features, some cytogenetic applications have been applied to characterize the chromosomes and to understand the evolution of the Coffea genome. In the following years, the chromosome number of many other species, varieties and hybrids of Coffea was determined as 2n = 22 or 2n = 44 (Krug 1937;Mendes 1938;Bouharmont 1959Bouharmont , 1963Sybenga 1960;Conagin and Mendes 1961).…”

“…Mendes (1938) (Mendes 1938). Bouharmont (1959Bouharmont ( , 1963 determined the number and length of the mitotic chromosomes of sixteen Coffea species, characterizing them as small and homomorphic and highlighting the hypothesis that the Coffea basic chromosome number is x = 11. Owing to the high intra-and interspecific similarity among chromosomes, the author was only able to distinguish five (1, 2, 3, 4 and 11) C. arabica 22 pachytene chromosomes were after characterized, being four metacentric (1, 8, 11 and 18), fourteen submetacentric (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 12, 15, 16, 17, 19 and 20) and four acrocentric (13, 14, 21 and 22).…”