Abstract
The 2 close related genera Coffea and Psilanthus present few cytogenetic studies due to their chromosomal symmetry. In the present we studied cytogenetically 4 species of the Coffee Germplasm Bank of the IAC: Coffea brevipes, C. racemosa, Psilanthus bengalensis and P. travancorensis. For heterochromatic banding assays the fluorochromes CMA3 and DAPI were used. For FISH assays the probes pTa71 and pScT7 were used to detect 18S-5.8S-26S (NOR) and 5S rDNA sites respectively. None of the 4 species presented DAPI positive bands. C. racemosa and P. travancorensis presented 2 CMA3 positive band pairs while the other 2 species presented only 1. Only C. racemosa presented more than 1 pair of NOR sites. Although we observed remarkable cytological similarity between the studied species and genera, the analysis based on these cytogenetic markers contributed to karyological characterization of these species and provided more data to taxonomic discussion in the group.
