Inheritance of Glume Size and Awn Length In Sorghum

Abstract

Genetic studies on the inheritance of awn length and glume size in sorghum indicate that (a) both characters are inherited in a quantitative fashion, (b) short awns and small glumes are strongly (but incompletely) dominant, (c) awnless is apparently due to an accumulation of short-awn alleles, (d) epistasis is important in the inheritance of glume size but not of awn length, and (e) linkage may be important in the inheritance of awn length. Analysis into Mather's D and H components of variance was unsatisfactory owing to the high correlation of D and H. Analysis into Hayman's components of the mean was more satisfactory but cannot be regarded as quantitatively accurate.