Inheritance of Dwarfism in <I>Blechnum gibbum</I> Mett.

Abstract

Silver lady fern (Blechnum gibbum Mett.) is a pot tree fern which has been utilized in many countries, in both sub-tropical and tropical regions of the world.  A number of dwarf forms of the fern, occasionally found as a variance from spore germination of a common silver lady fern, has more desirable characteristics to be used for table decorations.  Thus, the variance is highly desirable for consumers.  Due to its inability to produce spore, the dwarf variance has a propagation constrain.  To know how to reproduce this dwarf fern in commercial scale, an inheritance of dwarfism was investigated from spore germination using spores collected from the normal form which had produced some dwarf variances.  Segregation in a population of 7,463 progenies was analyzed.  Of which 2,341 are normal and 5,122 are dwarf.  A chi-square goodness of fit test indicated 4 alleles, postulated as d₁, d₂, d₃ and d₄, as the dwarfism controllers.  As an interallelic interaction among those four loci is a duplicate recessive epistasis.  Therefore, germination of spores from the 4 loci heterozygotes could be adopted for mass production the dwarf form in the future.