Let $$G=(V,E)$$ G = ( V , E ) be a connected graph with $$\left| V \right| =n$$ V = n and $$\left| E \right| = m.$$ E = m . A bijection $$f:E \rightarrow \{1,2, \dots , m\}$$ f : E → { 1 , 2 , ⋯ , m } is called a local antimagic labeling if for any two adjacent vertices u and v, $$w(u)\ne w(v),$$ w ( u ) ≠ w ( v ) , where $$w(u)=\sum \nolimits _{e\in E(u)}{f(e)},$$ w ( u ) = ∑ e ∈ E ( u ) f ( e ) , and E(u) is the set of edges incident to u. Thus any local antimagic labeling induces a proper vertex coloring of G where the vertex v is assigned the color w(v). The local antimagic chromatic number $$\chi _{la}(G)$$ χ l a ( G ) is the minimum number of colors taken over all colorings induced by local antimagic labelings of G. In this paper we present several basic results on this new parameter.