10. New characters in maize, teosinte, and maize-teosinte hybrids:

Maize —

• ad_L -- adherent plant. Can be classified in early seedling stage; tips of leaves stick together. Plant becomes almost normal until anthesis, when anthers, tassel branches, and silks become sticky and tend to adhere. Viability and fertility good. Chrom. unknown.

Teosinte —

• Several plants each of Nobogame, Huixta, Novocayan, and Durango teosinte were selfed and progeny tests made for genetic characters. The following characters segregated in 3:1 ratios:

  • zb_t -- zebra seedling.
  • ad_t -- adherent leaves.
  • d_t -- dwarf.
  • pg_t -- pale green (two cultures).
  • f_t -- fine stripe.
  • gl_t -- glossy.
  • w_t -- white seedling (two cultures).
  • co_t -- corrugated leaf (three cultures).
  • gs_t -- green stripe (three cultures).
  • ys_t -- yellow stripe.
  • la_t -- lazy teosinte (reported in 1938 News Letter).

  These genes will be crossed with similar maize genes to test for possible allelism.

Maize-Teosinte hybrids —

sd -- response to short day. Recessive to "weak" response to length of day in maize. Mendelian character.

pd -- single female spikelets. Recessive to paired female spikelets of maize. Segregates in 3:1 ratio. (Collins and Kempton, 1923).

tr -- two-ranked ear and two-ranked central branch of the tassel. Recessive to the many-ranked ear and many-ranked central branch of the maize tassel. Mendelian character.

pd is linked with tr with 20% recombination. Chromosome unknown.