Genetic characteristics of self fertility in highbush and half-high blueberries

Abstract

Parents and ten progeny from each of ten controlled crosses, and thirteen progeny from G65 x 'Ashworth' were self and outcross pollinated to study the inheritance of self fertility and the associations between self fertility and zygotic inbreeding levels in highbush and half-high blueberry genotypes. Reductions in self fertility were apparently a response to increased inbreeding. Both percent fruit set and seeds per pollination were negatively associated with family zygotic inbreeding coefficients. Although inbreeding depression was responsible for much of the observed self fertility responses, an environmental component was apparent as well. A continuous distribution of self fertility levels among the G65 x 'Ashworth' progeny provided little evidence for simple inheritance of this trait. Estimates of heritability were not significant and some evidence of specific combining ability was detected, indicating that parental self fertility was not predictive of the self fertility of the progeny in this study. Variation for self fertility including high levels in some individuals indicates a potential level of self fertility which could be incorporated into future selections and cultivars.

Genetic Diversity in the Highbush Blueberry Evaluated with Microsatellite Markers

“…Blueberry has reproductive characteristics that are associated with high heterozygosity. Blueberry fl owers have pollen shedding stigmas shaped like an inverted funnel that encourage cross-pollination by bees (Ehlenfeldt, 2001;Harrison et al, 1993;Shutak and Marucci, 1966). Blueberry cultivars also show varying degrees of self-fertility (Ehlenfeldt, 2001;Harrison et al, 1993;Krebs and Hancock, 1990) even though they lack a true system of self-incompatibility.…”

“…Blueberry fl owers have pollen shedding stigmas shaped like an inverted funnel that encourage cross-pollination by bees (Ehlenfeldt, 2001;Harrison et al, 1993;Shutak and Marucci, 1966). Blueberry cultivars also show varying degrees of self-fertility (Ehlenfeldt, 2001;Harrison et al, 1993;Krebs and Hancock, 1990) even though they lack a true system of self-incompatibility. Blueberry has polysomic inheritance (reviewed in Ehlenfeldt, 1994), which dramatically increases heterozygosity (reviewed in Soltis and Soltis, 2000).…”

Detection of DNA methylation pattern in thidiazuron-induced blueberry callus using methylation-sensitive amplification polymorphism

“…; 2n=4x=48) plants are hermaphroditic and predominantly crosspollinated in nature (Vander Kloet 1978), and reproduces sexually by bee-pollination or asexually by underground rhizome system (Bell et al 2009). Half-high blueberries are hybrids between highbush (V. corymbosum) and lowbush blueberries are outcrossing in nature (Harrison et al 1993). Being genetically heterozygous in nature, blueberry plants grown from the seeds are not true-totype to the donor plants.…”

Early-inbreeding depression inVaccinium myrtillus andV. vitis-idaea

“…In other partially self-sterile Vaccinium species, most of the observations do not support the hypothesis of self-incompatibility. The results obtained by Krebs and Hancock (1991) have shown a correlation between cross-and self-fertility of maternal plants in V. corymbosum, and so did those of Harrison et al (1993) in V. corymbosum and V. angustifolium.…”

“…Moreover, a seed yield decreasing with an increase in zygotic level of inbreeding was obtained in V. corymbosum (Krebs and Hancock 1990), and in V. corymbosum and V. angustifolium (Harrison et al 1993). Furthermore, the existence of postzygotic events in relation to partial self-sterility was established in V. coryrnbosum (Krebs and Hancock 1990, Vander Kloet 1991, Huang et al 1997.…”