Agrobacterium tumefaciens Tn5 mutants deficient in chemotaxis to root exudates were used to study the significance of chemotaxis in crown gall pathogenesis. Mutants deficient in motility and in chemotaxis were fully virulent when inoculated by direct immersion in inoculum, followed by growth for 2 weeks in moist growth pouches. Ability of mutant bacteria to move through soil to infect roots was tested by planting wounded seedlings into air-dried soil or sand that had been infested with inoculum. Mutant bacteria were almost as virulent as the parent on plants grown in sand but were avirulent on soil-grown plants.

Allohexaploid bread wheat is grown on more acreage than any other cereal crop, yet variation at the DNA level seems to be less than that observed in many diploid crop species. A common explanation for the small amount of DNA-level variation is that a severe bottleneck event resulted from the polyploidization events that gave rise to hexaploid wheat, whereby wheat was genetically separated from its progenitors. In this report, we test the extent of the bottleneck separating wheat from its D-genome progenitor, Triticum tauschii, by comparative DNA sequence analysis. Restriction site variation of low-copy DNA sequences amplified by PCR showed an average of 2.9 and 2.4 alleles per primer set in T. tauschii and wheat, respectively. Two different restriction patterns were present in T. tauschii for DNA amplified with a primer set for the A1 locus. Both alleles were also present in wheat. Alleles at the A1 locus were cloned and 527 bp of sequence obtained from 12 and 13 diverse accessions of wheat and T. tauschii, respectively. Average genetic distance among the wheat alleles was similar to that among the T. tauschii alleles (0.0127 and 0.0133, respectively). Nucleotide differences indicated that two distinct alleles existed in T. tauschii, both of which were present in wheat. These data suggest that hexaploid wheat formed at least twice, and that the bottleneck separating wheat from T. tauschii may be less constrictive than previously supposed.Key words: wheat, evolution, DNA.

We screened a total of 1365 pea (Pisum sativum) lines for response to inoculation with Agrobacterium tumefaciens, strain B6, and characterized resistance in one cultivar, Sweet Snap. Sweet Snap seedlings were highly resistant to tumorigenesis under most conditions. Resistance was overcome at inoculum concentrations of greater than 109 bacteria per milliliter. At such high concentrations, very small tumors developed on Sweet Snap in response to four wide-host-range Agrobacterium strains, but tumors on other cultivars were two-to sevenfold larger than those that formed on Sweet Snap. The hypervirulent strain A281 induced larger tumors on Sweet Snap than did other Agrobacterium strains, but tumors on other genotypes were more than 100% larger than those on Sweet Snap. Physiological experiments suggested that tumorigenesis in Sweet Snap is not blocked in early stages of infection, and genetic analysis indicated that inheritance of resistance to crown gall is a quantitative trait. In addition to the observed resistance in Sweet Snap, three 'supersusceptible' genotypes, which developed very large tumors, also were identified.

During pollen investigations on diploid alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) several plants were identified which produced "jumbo" pollen. The cause of the jumbo pollen is failure of the postmeiotic cytokinesis. These plants produce a single, four-nucleate microspore from one microspore mother cell (MMC) rather than the normal four, single-nucleate microspores from one MMC. Subsequent gametophyte development is characterized by fusion of the four nuclei into a single nucleus in most cases (range of 80 to 100%), followed by a developmental sequence comparable to normal alfalfa. Mature 4n male gametophytes are thus formed from 2n sporophytes. Genetic control of the postmeiotic cytokinesis failure is by a single recessive gene, designated jp. Although a low frequency of jumbo pollen does germinate (range of 3.1 to 37.8%), crossing studies demonstrate jumbo pollen is incapable of effecting fertilization. The use of the jp mutant in breeding studies, and interspecific hybridization research, is discussed.

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