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Randomness of Intermating in Soybean Populations Containing Male‐Sterile Plants
Author(s) -
St. Martin S. K.,
Ehounou N. E.
Publication year - 1989
Publication title -
crop science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.76
H-Index - 147
eISSN - 1435-0653
pISSN - 0011-183X
DOI - 10.2135/cropsci1989.0011183x002900010016x
Subject(s) - biology , pollen , sterility , population , pollination , mating , agronomy , botany , genetics , demography , sociology
The use of genetic male sterility has been proposed to facilitate intermating in soybean [ Glycine max L. (Merr.)]. With many breeding procedures, failure of such insect‐mediated pollination to result in equal contributions of the parents to the gametic pool could lead to undesirable results. The objective of this experiment was to evaluate male‐sterility‐facilitated intermating in a soybean population with respect to equality of parental contribution. Isolated plantings consisting of male‐sterile maintainer line L74‐01 with eight pollen parents were made in 1981 to 1983. The parents carried marker genes so chosen that the progeny of the crosses with L74‐01 could be identified as to pollen parent. The F −1 seed harvested from L74‐01 was planted in a winter nursery and F −1 plants harvested individually. Frequencies of marker phenotypes were observed in an F −2 progeny row to identify the pollen parent of each F −1 plant. The chisquare statistic was used to test for equality of contribution to the pollen pool by all pollen donors. Statistically significant differences among pollen donors were detected in all 3 yr. Variance of family size (V k ) in hypothetical intermated population with the same distribution of gametic frequencies as those of this experiment was calculated from the observed frequencies of parents in the pollen pool. The estimates of V k were, respectively, 1.2, 1.3, and 0.9 for the 3 yr of the study. Since these estimates were less than the value expected in a random‐mating population due to random variation of family size, inequality of gametic contributions, to the extent observed in this experiment, is probably not a serious drawback to the use of male sterility‐facilitated intermating in soybean breeding.