Summary
Seedlings of the F1 sunflower hybrid between inbred lines AHA 232 (cytoplasmic male sterile, non-branched) and RHA 274 (male fertile, homozygous for dominant fertility restorer and recessive branching) were treated with 0.5 per cent colchicine in lanolin applied to the newly exposed growing point after separation of the cotyledons. Of the 100 treated seedlings 54 survived to produce flowers and 50 set at least some seed. Ten of the treated F1 plants exhibited the recessive characters, branching or male sterility, originally present in heterozygous condition. These plants were usually chimeras with two or more sectors. A further 15 treated F1 plants produced aberrant F2 segregation ratios at the loci governing recessive branching or male sterility, or obvious mutants for such characters as rust resistance, height and maturity. The present results are compared and contrasted with earlier studies of colchicine-induced variants in sorghum, flax and barley. It is concluded that colchicine is a powerful mutagen in at least some genotypes of several crop species and further, that colchicine induced variants, like somaclonal variants, both of which apparently develop from a mass of undifferentiated tissue, may be a source of novel genotypes for plant breeding programs.
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Downes, R.W., Marshall, D.R. Colchicine-induced variants in sunflower. Euphytica 32, 757–766 (1983). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00042156
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00042156