APOMIXIS AND PLOIDY OF SEVERAL CRABAPPLE CULTIVARS, MALUS MILL.

The apomixis and ploidy of 10 ornamental crabapple cultivars and the control in Malus Mill. were studied by three treatments: emasculated flowers whithout pollination were bagged; emasculated flowers with artificial pollination were bagged; flowers without emasculation and artificial pollination were bagged.
The result showed that M. ‘Indian summer’ and M. ‘Snowdrift’ had the different ability of facultative apomixis.
The apomictic ability of M. ‘Strawberry Parifit’ without pollen is the highest.
Rate of fruit-set of M. ‘Strawberry Parifit’ emasculated without pollination was 95.2%, and rate of seed-set was 97.0%. Next was M. ‘Snowdrift’ and M. ‘Indian Summer’. Furthermore, the studied cultivars showed highly different ability of self-pollination except M. ‘Maypole’. The self-pollination ability of M. ‘Snowdrift’ was the highest (90.7%), which is rare in Malus. Taking the relation between polyploidy of the cell and apomixis into consideration, the ploidy of 10 cultivars were also identified by using FCM. The data of the FCM indicates that M. ‘Strawberry Parifit’ whthout pollen was the only triploid.
All of the rest with pollen were diploids, which indicates that the diploid plants also had the ability of apomixis.

XXVII International Horticultural Congress – IHC2006: International Symposium on Asian Plants with Unique Horticultural Potential

X.L. Qu, Z.Q. Mao, Y.L. Hu, X. Shen, L. Guo

Malus Mill., apomixis, FCM, ploidy

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2008.769.55