Use of male sterility for isolating apomictic sorghum lines

摘要

Isolation and investigation of lines with elements of apomixes is an area within modern plant genetics closely related to both fundamental problems of sexual reproduction and applied tasks of plant breeding. Sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench] is auseful species for investigating apomixis in that: 1. there is a great variety of different types of male-sterility systems that suppress the formation of functional pollen and self-fertilization in either sorghum genotype, which would produce plants with seed set in the absence of the sexual process; 2. it possesses a large inflorescence with many ovules each located in its own ovary, and fertilization can be visualized by observing the stigma condition; 3. the existence of dominant marker genes Rs determining antho-cyanin pigmentation of the coleoptile and first leaves of seedlings allows application of a progeny test for verifica-tion of the cyto-embryological data.