BGN 5: Inheritance of a 4-rowed mutant in barley BARLEY GENETICS NEWSLETTER, VOL. 5, II. RESEARCH NOTES
Prasad and Tyagi, pp. 40-42

II.23 Inheritance of a 4-rowed mutant in barley.

Ganesh Prasad and D.V.S. Tyagi. Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi 221005, India.

The 4-rowed mutant taken for this study had been induced in a 6-rowed barley var. K12 through EMS treatment (Tyagi 1971). In this mutant, central spikelets were missing and the remaining lateral spikelets formed 4-rows (Fig. 1). This mutant was crossed with linkage testers and F1 and F2 progenies were examined. X2-test for independence was applied to detect association with other characters.

Figure 1. Samples of four spike types: a, 6-rowed spike. b, 4-rowed spike. c, 2-rowed spike. d, 2-rowed spike.

F1 progeny showed that 2-rowed (V) and 6-rowed (v) characters were dominant to 4-rowed. Crosses with two-rowed type gave three types of segregants in F2: 2-rowed (363 plants), 6-rowed (111 plants) and 4-rowed (81 plants). Monogenic inheritance was observed in crosses with 6-rowed, the F2 ratio being 3:1 (Table 1).

Table 1. Segregation of 4-rowed character and X2-test for independence.

The genetic markers br, zb, b, trd, o and r were found to be inherited independently from 4-rowed character as is evident from the Table 1.

Previous reports indicate that kernel row number in barley is governed by Vv locus. Das (1957), Litzenberger and Green (1951), Murty and Jain (1960) and Prasad (1973) observed that two-rowed condition was dominant to 6-rowed condition. The irregulare type is dominant to 6-rowed and recessive to 2-rowed (Covas, 1951). In this study, the 4-rowed character was found to be recessive to 6-rowed character. From the crosses of 4-rowed (vf) with 2-rowed and 6-rowed, it appears that the row number is controlled by at least two loci. Further studies with a larger population size are in progress.

References:

Covas, G., 1951. Herencia del character "irregulare" en cebada. Rev. Argentina Agron. 18: 231-233.

Das, K., 1957. Partial sterility in a line of X-ray irradiated barley. Indi. J. Genet. P1. Breeding 17: 58-64.

Litzenberger, S. C. and J. M. Green, 1951. Inheritance of awns in barley. Agron. J. 43: 117-123.

Murty, G. S. and K. B. L. Jain, 1960. Genetic studies in barley. II. Inheritance of the lateral florets and certain other characters. J. Ind. Bot. Soc. 39: 281-308.

Prasad, Ganesh, 1973. Cytogenetic studies on barley translocations. Ph.D. thesis, Banaras Hindu University, pp. 76 typed.

Tyagi, D. V. S., 1971. Cytogenetic studies in barley: linkage relations of four mutants and effects of certain mutagens. Ph.D. thesis, Banaras Hindu University, pp. 123 typed.

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