Breeding of Vegetable, Spice and Tuber Crops

Chromosome number

Crop	Botanical Name	2n No
Spices
Black pepper	Piper nigrum	52
Cardamom	Eletteria cardamomum	48 and 52 Mysore type – 50 Malabar type – 48
Ginger	Zingiber officinale Rosc	22
Turmeric	Curcuma longa	63
vanilla	Vanilla planifolia	32

• Black pepper: Black pepper originated in Western Ghats and a large number of natural variability exists in Western Ghats as well as in Eastern Himalayas. All the cultivated types are diploid with the chromosome number 2n= 52.
• Cardamom: Cardamom being a cross-pollinated crop, a lot of phenotypic variants exists in nature. Cardamom is considered to be a balanced tetraploid. The chromosomal numbers are 2n= 48 and 2n= 52. Mysore and Malabar varieties of cardamom possess 2n= 50 and 2n= 48 chromosomes respectively and aneuploidy as well as structural alterations in the chromosome have contributed to the varietal differentiation.
• Ginger: Ginger (Zingiber officinale Rosc.) has 53 genera and over 1200 species, this is the largest family of the order Zingiberales. It is a sterile diploid. The somatic chromosome number of Z. officinale is 2n =22.
• Turmeric: The genus Curcuma consists of several species of commercial importance, besides C. longa. A few economically useful species are C.amada (mango ginger), C.angustifolia (Indain arrowroot), C. aromatica (Kasturi Manjal) and C. ceasia (black turmeric). Cultivated turmeric is triploid (2n =63) with a basic chromosome number X= 21.

 

• Vanilla: Vanilla planifolia is the only species commercially cultivated in India. The basic chromosome number of the genus vanilla is x=16 and V. planifolia is being considered as a diploid with 2n = 32