Quantitatively determined self-incompatibility. 5. Detection of multi-locus systems.

Multi-locus self-incompatibility systems may be distinguished from single-locus systems by reciprocal differences in backcrosses and between crossed progeny of individual clearly compatible crosses. Such crosses are extremely laborious, so other methods have been suggested. In this note, it is shown that the coefficient of crossability is not a useful discriminant of self-incompatibility, as indeed should be expected from the properties of multi-locus systems, and that linkage methods are also unlikely to be successful. Until more self-incompatibility genes have had their sequences characterised, there is no substitute for the traditional genetical methods.