INHERITANCE OF TWO AGRONOMICAL CHARACTERS IN THE APPLE TREE (MALUS PUMILA MILL.) : COMPACT TYPE HABIT AND FRUIT COLOUR.

Economic characters are usually inherited in a complex manner.
A good plant breeding methodology requires to find parents and progenies with the best expression of these characters.
For example, the inheritance of 2 characters is explained:

1. Inheritance of compact type habit ; ‘Granny Smith Standard’ and ‘Granny Smith Compact’ are crossed with a same female parent.
   In this variety the compact type mutation is polygenically inherited ; a table with 20 drawings combining fruiting habit and growth characteristics is proposed to assess and classify the different phenotypes.
   Other results are discussed.

2. Inheritance of fruit colour ; the progeny of ‘Richared Delicious’ × ‘Reinette de Landsberg’ is compared to ‘Idared’ × ‘Golden Delicious’. In the first progeny, ‘Richared’ × ‘Reinette de Landsberg’, a clear-cut difference was found between red apples, yellow apples and russeted apples.
   A simple explanation involving 3 independent genes – A, B and C – is proposed to explain the results: 2 dominant complementary genes leading to the yellow phenotype, A and B – only one of the 2 genes, A or B, for the red phenotype – russeted type requires a third dominant gene, C, only expressed in presence of the recessive genes, a and b.
   This hypothesis for fruit colour inheritance is discussed with other results.

Conference on Temperate Tree Fruits and Nuts Breeding

Y. LESPINASSE, J.M. LESPINASSE, B. GANNE

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.1985.159.5