The Diversity of Mangifera indica Cultivars in Subang West Java Based on Morphological and Anatomical Characteristics

The wide distribution and high species diversity produce large variation of its morphological, anatomical and genetic characteristics of local mangoes. Nowadays, most mango classifica-tion system is based on the generative character while the vegetative character is neglected. The purpose of this study is to develop foundation of vegetative character based on the simi-larity degree of mango cultivars based on the leaves’ anatomy and morphology. In this study, 21 mango cultivars were found in Subang, West Java. Leave samples were collected from the field and soaked in 70% alcohol. Leaf anatomy preparats were made by whole-mount method and paraffin. The results showed a high similarity on all samples. There were three variations of vascular tissues on petioles, i.e. U-shaped (plano-convex),U-lobed (highly convex) and cir-cular with the crystal type of druse, small cubes, and prismatic. All cultivars have actinocytic stomata and hypostomatic leaves. It could be concluded that stomatal density, size and index are less powerful to be applied as characters to identify cultivars of mangoes. However the presence of oxalate crystals can be used to classify mango cultivars in Subang. Biosaintifika, Vol. 9, No. 1. Hal. 156-167 ISSN 2085-191X