Production of Sexual Hybrid Progenies for Clarifying the Phylogenic Relationship between Citrus and Citropsis species

Abstract

The reciprocal crosses between two citrus cultivars and Citropsis schweinfurthii (Engl.) Swing. & M. Kell. were conducted. The cross between `Nanpu' tangor {`Kiyomi' tangor (Citrus unshiu Marc. × C. sinensis Osbeck) × `Fairchild' tangerine-tangelo [clementine (C. clementina hort. ex Tanaka) × `Orlando' tangelo (C. paradisi Macf. × C. reticulata Blanco)]} and C. schweinfurthii produced some developed seeds with an average weight approximately 1/10 of that of the seeds obtained from open pollination in `Nanpu' tangor. These seeds germinated on Murashige and Tucker medium, and three and 28 seedlings were obtained from crosses using C. schweinfurthii as the female and the male parent, respectively. The absolute nuclear genome size of these seedlings [∼0.84 pg of DNA content per somatic nucleus (2C)] was intermediate of that of the `Nanpu' tangor (0.78 pg/2C) and C. schweinfurthii (0.90 pg/2C) seedlings. The chromosome counts of the young leaves revealed that they were diploids (2n = 2X = 18). Furthermore, the hybridity of the seedlings obtained from the reciprocal crosses between `Nanpu' tangor and C. schweinfurthii was confirmed by randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) analysis and cleaved amplified polymorphic sequence (CAPS) analysis. These hybrids will be utilized as important materials for investigating the phylogenic relationships between these genera in the subfamily Aurantioideae.