The Basic Features of Self-Incompatibility

Abstract

All early workers (see for instance Herbert, Scott, Munro, stated in Darwin, 1880) and many authors in this century (Sutton, 1918; East and Mangelsdorf, 1925; East, 1929; Riley, 1935; Sears, 1937) have defined as self-sterility the incapacity of fertile plants to reproduce upon selfing. As was pointed out by Stout (1917) and admitted by East (1940), the terminology is improper and self-incompatibility is obviously the best name for describing a situation which, as will be seen throughout this book, involves a participation from both the pollen and the pistil and is, as such, basically different from male or female sterility where the phenotypic expressivity of the sterility genes is independent, before fertilization, of the genotypic constitution in the mating partner.