Self-incompatibility in passionfruit: evidence of gametophytic-sporophytic control

Abstract.

Self-incompatibility in passionfruit was studied in families originated from crosses among plants that presented differences in reciprocal crosses. The three families, obtained by crossing S ₃ plants, exhibited one incompatible group; no reciprocal differences were observed. The phenotype of the families was the same as the parent plants, S ₃. These results suggest the presence of a gene (G), gametophytic in its action, associated to the sporophytic gene S, modifying the incompatibility reaction in passionfruit. The reciprocal difference exhibited in the crosses among the parents could be explained as a matching between plants homozygous for S, but homozygous and heterozygous for G. Actually this would be a partially compatible cross, not detectable when the evaluation is done based on fruit set data. As the family originated from this kind of cross is homozygous for S and heterozygous for G, no reciprocal differences are expected, and the phenotype should be the same as the parental plants, as observed in the present work.