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ARS Home » Midwest Area » Madison, Wisconsin » Vegetable Crops Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #110190
Title: MOLECULAR ANALYSIS OF CYTOPLASMIC DIVERSITY IN LEEK

Author
item LEITE, DANIELA - DEPT OF HORT UW MADISON
item Havey, Michael

Submitted to: Onion Research National Conference Proceedings
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 2/25/2000
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Hybrid leek is more uniform and higher yielding than open-pollinated cultivars. Leek has perfect flowers and a male-sterility system is required to produce hybrid seed. A genic male-sterile plant has been identified and asexually propagated as the female parent of leek hybrids. A system of cytoplasmic male sterility (CMS) in leek would be a cheaper alternative to the high cost of asexually propagating female plants for hybrid production. Restriction fragment length polymorphisms (RFLPs) in the chloroplast and mitochondrial genome have correlated with CMS in many crops. We undertook Southern analyses of the chloroplast and mitochondrial DNAs to identify polymorphisms among the organellar genomes of 60 accessions of cultivated Allium ampeloprasum. No polymorphisms were detected in the chloroplast genome of leek and kurrat. Three accessions of leek and one of kurrat possessed polymorphisms for seven mitochondrial probe-enzyme combinations. Great-headed garlic differed from leek and kurrat for six polymorphisms in the chloroplast genome and for many mitochondrial probe-enzyme combinations. We identified individual plants possessing mitochondrial polymorphisms and are presently establishing if polymorphic cytoplasms correlate with the expression of CMS.