A CONTRIBUTION TO THE HEREDITY OF THE P.T.C. TASTE CHARACTER BASED ON A STUDY OF 845 SIB‐PAIRS

Abstract

Summary1. 128 sibships comprising 489 sibs and 845 sib‐pairs belonging to the Rárhi Bráhmin community of West Bengal have been studied for p.t.c. taste thresholds by the serial dilution method with a final sorting test.2. Expectations on the basis of (A) the hypothesis of recessive inheritance of the ‘non‐taster’ phenotype and (B) the hypothesis of chance combination of pairs without any influence of heredity have been compared with the observed data of sib‐pairs.3. Neither of the two hypotheses shows a satisfactory agreement (by the x2 test) with the entire mass of observed data. The hypothesis (A), however, appears to be a much closer approach (x2= 17·5 and 20·55, 2 d.f.) to the facts than the hypothesis (B) which yields much higher x2 values (x2= 87·11 and 86·93, 2 d.f.).4. The extreme ‘tasters’ and ‘non‐tasters’ when separated from the intermediate phenotypes show a very good agreement (x2= 4·340, 3 d.f.) with the hypothesis (A), but a wide divergence (x2= 75·892, 3 d.f.) from the hypothesis (B).5. The intermediate ‘tasters’ and ‘non‐tasters’, however, indicate merely a slightly nearer approach (x2= 18·45, 3 d.f.) to hypothesis (B) than to hypothesis (A) (x2= 26·69, 3 d.f.)The author records his thanks to Dr N. Datta‐Majumder, the Director, Department of Anthropology for providing the facilities for the work and to Dr E. C. Biichi, the Superintending Anthropologist for useful discussions. Thanks are also due to Sm. Lalita Ghosh for her sincere assistance.