Inheritance patterns of erucic acid content in populations of Brassica napus microspore-derived spontaneous diploids.

The levels of erucic acid and other fatty acids in seeds of microspore-derived spontaneous diploid plants from crosses between low and high erucic acid parents were examined. The analysis confirmed that erucic acid is simply inherited and is determined by two genes that act in an additive manner. The effects of the genes for erucic acid on the levels of the other fatty acids was also determined and many significant correlations were found. In particular, erucic acid levels were negatively correlated with oleic acid and linoleic acid levels. The study also illustrates several advantages of using haploidy to analyze the inheritance of agronomically important traits. In particular, the number of phenotypic classes is smaller in androgenic populations and differences between classes are greater than in an F2 population.