monocot seedlings without chlorophyll
Jon Suzuki via pbs (Fri, 12 Feb 2021 12:47:43 PST)

I would like to add a comment on albino seedlings. I think if the mother
plant is a hybrid, and the seeds are due to selfing of the mother plant,
albino seedlings might result from nuclei/cytoplasmic incompatibility. 90%
of the chloroplast gene products are transported into the chloroplast from
nucleus-expressed genes. A subset of these nucleus-expressed gene products
have to interact like lock and key with gene products expressed from the
chloroplast genome. The chloroplast and its genome is inherited from
either maternal parent or less often paternal parent depending on species.
In hybrids, the nucleus expressed gene products from one parent might not
fit well with the chloroplast gene products of the other parent. And this
might be observed in the progeny of the hybrid, when segregation of the
nuclear genome occurs. I think this is one cause of appearance of albino
seedlings.

On Thu, Feb 11, 2021 at 6:50 PM rw2229 via pbs <
pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net> wrote:

On Mon, 1 Feb 2021 at 05:32:03 -0800, Kathleen Sayce <
kathleen.sayce@gmail.com> wrote

I am curious to know how typical it is for seedlings in monocot groups

to have no chlorophyll.

This fall I noticed a tall Agapanthus in my garden had a few seeds on

the stalk, so I gathered

those that were left and sprouted them on a window sill, along with

seeds from a Watsonia. So

far, 14 of the 16 Agapanthus have chlorophyll, 2 do not, 12.5 percent.

The Watsonia pot has 12

seedlings, 11 have chlorophyll, 8.3 percent.

12.5 percent seems high for a known fatal condition among photosynthetic

species.

How common is this condition?

I suspect more common among monocots than any of us realize. I've grown
bamboo from seed (on those rare occasions when any is set), and iirc a good
50% of the seedlings lack chlorophyll.

_______________________________________________
pbs mailing list
pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net
http://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/cgi-bin/…
Unsubscribe: <mailto:pbs-unsubscribe@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net>

_______________________________________________
pbs mailing list
pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net
http://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/cgi-bin/…
Unsubscribe: <mailto:pbs-unsubscribe@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net>