INTERSPECIFIC HYBRIDS BETWEEN PEARL-MILLET AND FOUNTAINGRASS

A cross between sexual pearl millet and apomictic foun- taingrass produced an apomictic hybrid that morphologically resembled fountaingrass. The hybrid was male sterile and set a few seeds when pollinated with pearl millet pollen. At metaphase 1, over 50 percent of the micro- sporocytes showed one or more associations between pearl millet and fountaingrass chromosomes. Some fountaingrass chromosomes were eliminated in somatic division. A procedure is presented for transferring germplasm from fountaingrass to pearl millet by bypassing the sexual process. It involves the irradiation of the F! plant to produce translocations between the genomes and then recovering the pearl millet genome with pieces of the fountaingrass genome from tillers. © 1979 American genetic association.