Rye-Wheat hybrids from reciprocal crosses

Conclusion

• 1. Crosses between wheat and rye present no special difficulties if wheat is used as the mother plant. The percentage of successful fertilisations depends in this case chiefly on the choice of the races intended for crossing purposes.

• 2. Reciprocal crosses, where the pistillate parent is rye, were until quite recently considered impossible. We succeeded, however, in making such crosses when the flowers of local winter rye were pollinated with the pollen of the pure line wheat No. 648, which readily hybridises with rye in direct crosses.

• 3. In 1925, when the technique of these crosses had been sufficiently elaborated, we obtained 96 grains from 3894 rye flowers emasculated and pollinated with wheat pollen,i.e. 2.5 per cent. of successful fertilisations, while in direct crosses this percentage usually exceeds 60.

• 4. F ₁ plants from direct and reciprocal crosses proved to be identical in morphological characters, as well as in fertility.

• 5. Maternal inheritance recorded by E. F. Gaines and F. J. Stevenson for reciprocal crosses—rye ♀ x wheat ♂—has not been confirmed by our experiments.