Some Characters of Sesamum indicum, L. and their Inheritance

Abstract

We have three races of sesame (Sesamum indicum, L.), classified in the colors of the seed coat. They are white sesame, black sesame and brown sesame, and they have each its peculiar characteristics.
Among the results of many experiments in the characters of these races a few of them will be mentioned here.
The stiffness of the seed coat of the black and the brown seeds is chiefly due to the thicknening of the lower part of the side wall in the epidermal cells with which a deposition of something like the crystals of calcium oxalate on the bottom wall is completely linked, and the tenderness of the white seeds is due to the contrary nature of the epidermal cells to the foregoing one. The behavior of the hereditary nature of this character follows a simple Mendelian rule, the stiffness being dominant over the tenderness and the heterozygotes segregating into “3 stiffs to 1 tender” in the F₂-generation.
The having colors on the seed coat is dominant over not having the same and the heterozygotes segregate in the F₂-generation into several colors of lower classes, but we have riot a plenty time to discuss the matter now.
The quantity of the chemical constituents of the seeds was analyzed by Dr. YOSHIMURA of the Kagoshima Imperial Colege of Agriculture and Forestry, and the results are as follows:
Water …… 8.570
Crude protein …… 22.088
Crude oily substance …… 44.560
Carbohydrates and Asbes etc. …… 24.782*
The analysis of my materials was performed by my colleague, Prof. KURAHASHI to whom I desire to express my hearty thanks, and the results are as follows:
The quantities of the crude protein and the crude oil in my analysis are nearly the same with those of Dr. Yoshimura's, and as in the last table those substances of the hybrids between the white (sometimes expressed in W.) and the black (sometimes expressed in B.) sesame, and its reciprocal one look like one of the cases of the maternal inheritance but in this case we must consider the structure of the seeds as to the generations to which the substances belong.
The seed coat is a part of the P-plant and the embryo as well as the endosperm are parts of the F₁-plant, and the proportions of the table are derived from the relative quantities of these two different generations. The appearance of the matroclinous nature in these substances can perhaps be accounted for in the relativity of the structure of the seed coat to the embryo and the endosperm; and if the quantities of these substances contained in the embryos only, be treated the hereditary behavior would have followed a simple Mendelian rule.