This study had the objective to determine the karyotype of four accessions of Capsicum chinense from Rio Janeiro, Bahia, Pará e Maranhão. In all accessions were observed 2n=2x=24 chromosomes. Chromosome polymorphism was observed in the accession from Rio de Janeiro, which presented 11 pairs of metacentric and 1 submetacentric pair of chromosomes, differing from the other accessions, which presented 11 pairs of metacentric and 1 acrocentric pair chromosomes. All the accessions presented the same value, on average, of chromosome length. The karyologic data was submitted to univariate and multivariate analysis with dissimilarity indexes obtained by standardized average of Euclidean distance and grouping clustering by the Ward's method, with the objective of estimating the genetic divergence among accessions. The multivariate statistic using cytogenetic data was effective to distinguish C. chinense accessions, considering that it was possible to allocate the Rio de Janeiro accession isolated from the others accessions. So, the present study showed the importance of the multivariate statistic in cytogenetic characterization study involving accessions that present chromosome variability.
cytogenetic characterization; chromossomic variability; multivariate analysis; karyotype
