IDENTITY/ALLELISM TESTS FOR DIFFERENT SOURCES OF GENE af

PNL Volume 14 1982 RESEARCH REFORTS

Swiecicki, W. K. Plant Experiment Station, Wiatrowo, Poland

Kujala (1953) and Goldenberg ( 1965) are the officially accepted

authors for the gene afila and the symbol af, respectively (1). At

present, lines with the same phenotype and presumably the same genotype

are located in different laboratories throughout the world. Much of

this distribution is owing to the fact that the original line of

Goldenberg has been distributed the world over; for example, all lines

in the USA came from Goldenberg via Marx or directly from Goldenberg.

Thanks to cooperative exchanges among pea researchers, the afila mutant

is now utilized in many breeding and experiment stations and some cul-

tivars have been bred (England, Poland, USA, USSR). Because of this

widespread exchange, it is difficult in some cases to establish the

original source of the mutant lines.

Yet mutants with a phenotype seemingly identical with have

been reported. Since it is possible that new mutations may occur at the

af 11a locus or, alternatively, that new mutations with the same

phenotype may occur at different loci (as was suggested for example by

Jaranowski, Gen. Pol. 1977), I decided to make identity test-crosses of

afila-lines collected from different sources.

Six lines of the mutant afila were selected for this test

(Table 1). The Goldenberg mutant has already been test-crossed to the

Kujala mutant (Finland) and found identical (Blixt, personal

communication) but the Kujala mutant was subsequently lost and therefore

no longer available. Other lines existing in different laboratories can

be traced back with great probability to the six sources listed in

Table 1, plus the Kujala line.

Homozygous, recessive lines of afila-type mutants were crossed in a

full diallel analysis. All resulting F1 plants were of the afila type.

It can therefore be stated that all afila mutations known at present are

determined by the gene af in chromosome 1.

1. Blixt, S. 1979. PNL 9, Supplement.