Gaspe Flint plants display normally extensive tillering from the lower nodes as a dominant trait. Since crown roots emerge also from the lower nodes, a mutual influence of tiller- and crown root formation initiated from the same node would be an interesting feature of the nodes. To test this allusion we took advantage of the root deficient mutant rtcs (see MNL 66:45, 1992), which lacks completely crown root formation and does not even display any microscopically visible crown root primordia (W. Hetz et al., Plant J. 10:845-857, 1996), and transferred the rtcs locus into Gaspe Flint. This was done by crossing the monogenic recessive rtcs with Gaspe Flint and analyzing the segregating F2 population for the occurrence of rtcs plants without tillering, which would be an indication for the influence of the rtcs locus on tiller formation. However, we observed only tillering rtcs plants (a representative example is shown in the Figure), which leads us to conclude that the molecular defect of rtcs plants leading to a lack of crown root formation is without influence on the tiller initiation from the same nodes.

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