Abstract
The bulb color of tropical shallot is commonly red, but there is a shallot with white bulb color in Indonesia. Genetic information to classify the white shallot and utilize it as breeding material is non-existent, so that we decided to genetically characterize the Indonesian white bulb shallot. Except for the colors of the bulbs, the leaves at sprouting and the anthers, the white shallot shared all morphological characters with the red bulb shallot (Allium cepa L. Aggregatum group, red shallot). The white shallot, which has eight homologous somatic chromosome pairs, possessed the same karyotype and meiotic behaviour as the red shallot. There was also a high cross compatibility between the white shallot and red shallot. Furthermore, PCR-RFLP analyses of chloroplast DNA and mitochondrial DNA showed that these cytoplasmic components were similar for both shallot types. We conclude that the white shallot belongs to the A. cepa L. Aggregatum group ; we suppose that the white shallot originated from the red shallot through natural mutation processes.
