• Korean Journal of Plant Tissue Culture
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.239-256
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• 1997

Plants belonging to the category of 2n apomixis or agamospermy form embryos and seeds without the processes of normal meiosis and syngamy. Seeds produced in this way have identical genotype of their maternal parent. Three different types of agamospermy are recognized: diplospory, apospory, and adventitious (adventive) embryony. $F_1$ hybrid cultivars cannot be used as seed sources in the next ($F_2$) generation because this generation would be extremely variable as a result of genetic segregation. Hybrid vigor is also reduced in the $F_2$ generation. Therefore, parental stocks for hybrid seed production need to be maintained and cross must be continuously repeated. Agamospermic 2n apomixis would make it possible to fix the genotype of a superior variety so that clonal seeds faithfully representing that genotype could be continuously and cheaply produced independent of pollination. That is, $F_1$ hybrid seeds could be produced for many generations without loss of vigor or genotype alteration. Production of apomictic $F_1$ hybrid seed would be simplified because line isolation would not be necessary to produce seed or to maintain parental lines, and the use of male-sterile lines could be avoided. Overall, apomixis would enable a significant reduction in hybrid seed production costs. Additionally, the production of clonal seed is not only important for seed propagated crops, but also for the propagation of heterozygous fruit trees and timbers. Clonal seed would help avoid costly and time-consuming vegetative propagating methods that are currently used to ensure the large-scale production of these plants. Apomixis is scattered throughout the plant kingdom, but few important agricultural crops possess this trait Therefore, most research to date has centered on introgressing the trait of apomixis into agricultural crops such as wheat, maize, and some forage grasses from wild distant relatives by traditional cross breeding. The classical breeding approach, however is slow and often impeded by many breeding barriers. These problems could be surmounted by taking mutagenesis or molecular approach. Arabidopsis thaliana is a tiny sexually reproducing plant and is convenient in constructing and screening in molecular researches. Male-sterile mutants of Arabidopsis are particularly suitable genetic background for mutagenesis and screening for apomictic mutants. Molecular approaches towards isolating the genes controlling the apomictic process are feasible. Direct isolation of genes conferring apomixis development would greatly facilitate the transfer of this trait to wide variety of crops. Such studies are now in progress.

• KOREAN JOURNAL OF CROP SCIENCE
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• v.37 no.5
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• pp.476-485
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• 1992

M1 plants which were produced from seed soaking in chemical mutagen, EMS or NaN$_3$, appeared wide morphorogical variations such as dwarf, albino, twisted leaf, white streaked leaf, and purpled stem. In mutants of reproductive organs, there were monoecious plants such as female-flower plant and male-flower plant, multiple spikes, and steriled plants among M1 plants. Also, barren stalk was increased significantly in M1 plants. Ear bagging at ear initiation stage prevented seed set on cob in normal plants. In spite of ear bagging, M1 plants which had cobs with seed set was 3.9-11.2% of stalks developed from seeds soaking with mutagens, but only three or four kernels could be matured on a cob. Ear bagging after mutagen injection into initiating ear produced 5.1-10% in cobs with seed set, but only 1.7-6.3 kernels could be matured. Cobs removed silk at four hours after artificial pollination increased the rate of cobs with seed set to 27%. Microscopic observation confirmed that ontogeny of kernels matured from ear bagging and mutagen treatment would be both adventitious and diplosporous apomictic reproduction. Chromosome set of M2 seedling was found to be diploid type in chromosomal counting of root tip. As M$_2$ plants showed an uniform appearence within each lines and their CV of plant height were ranged 4-6% in each lines, we concluded that they were apomictic progeny. But we could not find any marker traits combined with apomixis.

• Journal of Plant Biotechnology
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.87-93
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• 2003

Brachiaria (Poaceae) is the most important forage genus for cattle production in Brazil. The genetic breeding of this genus is limited by the incompatibility among species, differences in ploidy level and the natural cloning of plants by apomixis (Valle and Miles 1992). However, plant regeneration via tissue culture methods and genetic engineering provide an opportunity to introduce new characteristics in plants of this genus. We have developed methods for the 'genetic modification of Brachiaria brizantha cv. Marandu via biolistic transformation. A higher number of shoots was obtained with 4 mg/L 2.4-diclorophenoxyacetic acid and 0.2 mg/L benzylaminopurine in calli induction medium and 0.1 mg/L naphtaleneacetic acid and 4.0 mg/L kinetin in shoot regeneration medium. A selection curve for mannose was determined to use phospho mannose isomerase (PMI) gene of Escherichia coli as a selection marker. Calli formation was inhibited from 5 g/L mannose, even in the presence of sucrose while calli that were formed in the presence of mannose failed to develop embryos showing that PMI gene can be used for selection of transformants of this grass. Different promoters were tested to evaluate the efficiency based on the detection of the GUS gene expression (Jefferson et al. 1987). The monocot promoters, act1-D and ubi-1, resulted in higher expression levels than dicot promoters, ubi-3 and act-2, or the CaMV35S and CVMV promoters.

• Horticultural Science & Technology
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.618-626
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• 2010

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' ${\times}$ '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.