Pollen tube expression of pseudo-self-compatibility (PSC) inPetunia hybrida.

AnS 1.1 self-incompatible (SI) petunia plant which showed atypical seed set was found in an I7 population. This plant showed a strong SI reaction when selfed but produced varying amounts of seed when used as the seed parent in crosses with unrelated individuals homozygous for the sameS allele. Reciprocal crosses yielded no seed indicating that the reaction was a stylar response. Self seed obtained by high temperature treatments produced 18 plants, all of which exhibited the parental characteristics, the ability to reject self pollen but accept, to varying degrees, pollen bearing the sameS allele from unrelated plants. Several petunias homozygous forS 1, and exhibiting various levels of PSC as determined by self seed set, progeny tests and temperature treatments, were used as pollen parents. The mean seed set of these crosses produced a ranking of the pollen parents which reflected the PSC levels obtained by other methods. The behavior of the F1 and F2 populations suggests that the pollen discriminating ability may be a simply inherited, dominant character in these plants. The styles of these unusual petunias illustrate the participation of the pollen tube in determining PSC.