Abstract
In order to study the relationship between pollen sterility and free amino acids in the anthers of rice plants, the experiment was carried out. About 60 plants which showed various degrees of sterility caused by haploidy, triploidy, tetraploidy, translocation, asynapsis and F1 hybrid between Indica and Japonica types, were analysed fcr free amino acids, especially for proline, hy paper chromatography. The results were compared with those from about 50 normal plants comprising various species, sub-species and varieties including wild types, Indica types and Japonica types(Tables 1, 2 and 3) . The chromatograms of the anthers from all normal plants had a very distinct yellow spot of proline, which was either lacking or very faint in the chromatograms of the sterile anthers of haploid and asynaptic rice plants. All other serni- and complete-sterile anthers in rice plants, that is, translocation, triploidy, and intersubspecific hybrid, however, gave a highly sterrile remarkable yellow spot of proline in spite of their high sterility of ahthers. From these results, the semi- or complete-sterile anthers except for haploid and asynaptic plants are not necessarily characterized by a lack of proline
