Identification of incompatibility alleles in the tetraploid species sour cherry

The incompatibility genetics of sour cherry (Prunus cerasus), an allotetraploid species thought to be derived from sweet cherry (diploid) and ground cherry (tetraploid), were investigated by test crossing and by analysis of stylar ribonucleases which are known to be the products of incompatibility alleles in sweet cherry. Stylar extracts of 36 accessions of sour cherry were separated electrophoretically and stained for ribonuclease activity. The zymograms of most accessions showed three bands, some two or four. Of the ten bands seen, six co-migrated with bands that in sweet cherry are attributed to the incompatibility alleles S ₁ , S ₃ , S ₄ , S _6, S ₉ and S ₁₃ . aanski Rubin, Erdi Botermo B, Koro and Ujfehertoi Furto, which showed bands apparently corresponding to S ₁ and S ₄ , were test pollinated with the sweet cherry Merton Late (S ₁ S ₄ ). Monitoring pollen tube growth, and, in one case, fruit set, showed that these crosses were incompatible and that the four sour cherries indeed have the alleles S ₁ and S ₄ . Likewise, test pollination of Marasca Piemonte, Marasca Savena and Morello, Dutch with Noble (S ₆ S ₁₃ ) showed that these three sour cherries have the alleles S ₆ and S ₁₃ . S ₁₃ was very frequent in sour cherry cultivars, but is rare in sweet cherry cultivars, whereas with S ₃ the situation is reversed. It was suggested that the other four bands are derived from ground cherry and one of these, provisionally attributed to S _B , occurred frequently in a small set of ground cherry accessions surveyed. Analysing some progenies from sour by sweet crosses by S allele-specific PCR and monitoring the success of some sweet by sour crosses were informative. They indicated mostly disomic inheritance, with sweet cherry S alleles belonging to one locus and, presumably, the ground cherry alleles to the other, and helped clarify the genomic arrangement of the alleles and the interactions in heteroallelic pollen.Communicated by H.F. Linskens