Inheritance of Habit in the Common Bean

HABIT is the external form of a plant taken as a whole. It is usually described by a f ew general adjectives, such as erect, open, spreading, etc. However, to study the inheritance of plamit babit, a detailed analysis of the real characters underlying habit must be made. It is usually found that the general outer appearance of a plant, its habit, is time result of a combinations of independent characters, units, time recomlbination of Which by)WT crossing often results in plants mnuch altered in appearance from time paremit varieties. Characters usually nnimportant maTy be found of primary importance in time formation of plamit halbit. An example of such inheritance of habit is found in one of Webber's pepper hybrids (6). A cross was made between Red Chili, a variety with many erect fine branches, amid Golden Dawn, with few, horizontal, coarse branches, both beillg of mediunm size. In time second generation recomlbination and segregation of time three character pairs occurred, although not iii strict Mendelian proportions. Time important feature of time results, however, lies in time a)paremmt creation of a giant and a dwarf type, not by, the appearance of new units by mnutation, bnt simply by the transference of time characters fine and coarse. branches. Hybrids having erect, many and coarse branches were giants, while tbose having few, horizontal and coarse brancimes were dwarfs. Other combinations of these characters gave intermediate forms. Time study here reported was made largely on third and fourth generation plants and a few second generation plants of hybrids made primarily for the study of pig-