Skewed Inheritance of EST-SSR Alleles in Reciprocal Crosses of Cut Roses

Abstract

Matroclinal inheritance of morphological characters in interspecific crosses of Rosa spp. can be influenced by cytoplasmic inheritance, apomixis, and asynaptic heterogamy. In asynaptic heterogamy, which is often observed from interspecific crosses of Rosa sect. Caninae, the polyploidy of the seed parent (especially for 5x=35) is recovered in the progeny through the pollens that include only a set of bivalents (x=7) and egg cells that contain a set of bivalents (x=7) and other univalents (3x=21). In this study, we investigated the causes of matroclinal offsprings observed from reciprocal crosses of tetraploid cut rose cultivars (Rosa hybrida L.) by analyzing EST-SSR marker distribution in the progeny populations. From EST-SSR marker analysis of eight offsprings per six reciprocal crosses among six cultivars, cases of cytoplasmic inheritance were not observed. Apomixis was also very rare as compared to the reports on interspecific crosses of sect. Caninae; only one apomitic plant was identified from the cross 'Redtem' x 'Red Sandra'. Although a clear-cut pattern of asynaptic heterogamy was not found, cultivar-specific marker transmission skewed to seed parent in four cultivars implied that genetic inheritance can be highly influenced by the seed parent depending on crosses among cut rose cultivars; especially, 10 out of 11 alleles specific to 'Yellow King' distributed in progenies at higher ratios when the cultivars were crossed as the seed parent.