Journal of Heredity Advance Access published online on March 13, 2008
Journal of Heredity, doi:10.1093/jhered/esn019
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Brief Communications |
Inheritance of Pollen-less Anthers and "Thrum" and "Pin" Flowers in Periwinkle
From the Central Institute of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants, Resource Centre, Allalasandra, Bangalore 560 065, India
Address correspondence to R. N. Kulkarni at the address above, or e-mail: krnpbg{at}yahoo.co.in.
Two mutants, 1 with small, pollen-less anthers (OR-EA) and another with "pin" flowers (EMS 13-2), in contrast to "thrum" flowers found in normal periwinkle (Catharanthus roseus) plants, were isolated after induced mutagenesis in strain OR and cultivar, "Dhawal," respectively. Inheritance of these 2 traits, pollen-less anthers, and pin flowers was studied by crossing the mutants with their respective parental strains. Segregation ratios observed in F2 and testcross generations of the cross OR-EA x OR suggested that the pollen-less anthers trait was determined by duplicate recessive genes. Data obtained from F2 and F3 generations of the cross involving mutant EMS 13-2 with pin flowers and its parental variety Dhawal, suggested that production of pin (mutant) and thrum (normal) flowers was under the control of inhibitory epistatic interaction between 2 independently inherited genes.
Corresponding Editor: Reid Palmer
Received September 17, 2007
Accepted