Determination of intra-specific karyotypic variation in 17 genotypes of Agropyron elongatum L

Agropyron is one of the most resistant plants to biotic and abiotic stresses. It has important role to produce forage yield in rangelands. In order to investigate karyotypic variation between seventeen genotypes of Agropyron elongatum L., this experiment was performed. Root tip meristems were used for karyotypic evaluation. Alfa-bromo-naphthalene and Levitsky solution were used as pretreatment and fixative, respectively. Chromosomes were stained by hematoxylin. Long arm length (L), short arm length (S), total chromosome length (TL), L/S and S/L, and total form percentage (TF%) were recorded. Genotypes were mainly decaploid (2n = 10x = 70) and one genotype was mixoploid (2n = 6x = 42, 2n = 10x = 70, 2n = 2x = 14). According to cluster analysis the genotypes were classified into 3 clusters. Based on principle components analysis, relative length of chromosome and total chromosome length had the greatest amount of variance.