Florida Agricultural Experiment Station


Means of later generation hybrids were considerably below the
mid-point of their parents.
 Marked transgressive segregation of F2 families above the
greater parents was found in four crosses of Spanish and run-
ner peanuts. These segregations were thought to indicate the
presence of considerably more genic material for long rest
period in the less dormant parents than was evident in their
own rest period tests and that a large part of this genic material
was different from any found in the more dormant parents.
 Rest period behavior suggested and agreed closely with a
theory of multigenic inheritance with the zero point of rest
period coinciding with a germination threshold lying near the
mid-point of the range of the seed condition basic to rest period.
Seed condition may be a typical quantitative character. It is
complex and has not been identified by physiological studies.
Regression of rest period on seed condition and genotype be-
comes discontinuous at the lower limit of rest period. Presum-
ably the point of discontinuity is near the mid-points of the
ranges of seed condition and genotype. Approximately the left
one-half of a usual picture of quantitative inheritance is thus
compressed into a single class of zero rest period. The right
one-half is obtained with little or no distortion.
 A single pair of major genes differentiating long and short
seeds with the heterozygote intermediate was demonstrated in
crosses of Spanish and runner peanuts. The results indicated
that seed shape was controlled largely by maternal impression
and very little by the genotype of the seed.
 Russet seed coat color of runner peanuts behaved as a single
dominant to tan color of Spanish peanuts.
 Yellow seedlings appearing among progenies of a number of
crosses indicated duplicate gene inheritance with green fully
dominant. It was also indicated that the genotypes L1L1212,
liliLL2 and L1L1LL2 might be assigned respectively to the
Spanish group, to the runner group and A. Nambyquarae, and
to the Valencia group and A. Rasteiro. Deficiencies of recessive
zygotes were found in both monohybrid and dihybrid progenies
in all crosses and in some cases deficiencies of segregating plants
in proportion to true breeding dominants also were found.
attempt to calculate deficiencies of recessive zygotes and gan
in both sexes was only partially successful. No explanatic
deficiencies other than lower vigor of recessive gametes
zygotes was discovered.