PNL Volume 14 1982 RESEARCH REFORTS
IDENTITY/ALLELISM TESTS FOR DIFFERENT SOURCES OF GENE af
Swiecicki, W. K. Plant Experiment Station, Wiatrowo, Poland
Kujala (1953) and Goldenberg ( 1965) are the officially accepted
authors for the gene afila and the symbol af, respectively (1). At
present, lines with the same phenotype and presumably the same genotype
are located in different laboratories throughout the world. Much of
this distribution is owing to the fact that the original line of
Goldenberg has been distributed the world over; for example, all lines
in the USA came from Goldenberg via Marx or directly from Goldenberg.
Thanks to cooperative exchanges among pea researchers, the afila mutant
is now utilized in many breeding and experiment stations and some cul-
tivars have been bred (England, Poland, USA, USSR). Because of this
widespread exchange, it is difficult in some cases to establish the
original source of the mutant lines.
Yet mutants with a phenotype seemingly identical with have
been reported. Since it is possible that new mutations may occur at the
af 11a locus or, alternatively, that new mutations with the same
phenotype may occur at different loci (as was suggested for example by
Jaranowski, Gen. Pol. 1977), I decided to make identity test-crosses of
afila-lines collected from different sources.
Six lines of the mutant afila were selected for this test
(Table 1). The Goldenberg mutant has already been test-crossed to the
Kujala mutant (Finland) and found identical (Blixt, personal
communication) but the Kujala mutant was subsequently lost and therefore
no longer available. Other lines existing in different laboratories can
be traced back with great probability to the six sources listed in
Table 1, plus the Kujala line.
Homozygous, recessive lines of afila-type mutants were crossed in a
full diallel analysis. All resulting F1 plants were of the afila type.
It can therefore be stated that all afila mutations known at present are
determined by the gene af in chromosome 1.
1. Blixt, S. 1979. PNL 9, Supplement.
