2008 Volume 77 Issue 4 Pages 358-363
We obtained nonaploid plants by embryo culture of imperfect seeds derived from a cross between ‘Fuyu’ and ‘Taishuu’, both of which are commercially important persimmon cultivars. Furthermore, we aimed to clarify the origin of nonaploid plants derived from imperfect seeds. Of 1078 seeds, 68 were imperfect; this accounted for 6.3% of the total number. Ten of the 68 seeds germinated into seedlings, and two produced abnormal plantlets without meristems at both the shoot apex and root tip. The remaining eight produced normal-appearing plantlets with normal growth. Two seedlings were recovered from the abnormal plantlets via callus, and grew vigorously in the greenhouse. Cytogenetic analysis confirmed that these two seedlings were nonaploids. Parental analysis using four simple sequence repeats (SSR) markers, D.CT-13, 24, 61 and 179, showed that each nonaploid seedling had alleles originating from the parents, indicating that they were generated by syngamy. The two nonaploid seedlings had alleles of 222 bp at D.CT-61, which is peculiar to the pollen parent, ‘Taishuu’, whereas they did not have an allele of 136 or 140 bp at D.CT-179, which is peculiar to the seed parent, ‘Fuyu’. These results suggest that they might be derived from fertilization of a reduced female gamete with an unreduced male gamete.
