Irregularities at Microsporogenesis in Colchicine-induced Male Sterile Mutants in Sorghum vulgare Pers. 1

A. W. Erichsen and J. G. Ross WHILE studying microsporogenesis in certain plants in a segregating progeny of a colchicine-induced mutant, Sanders and Franzke (6) discovered that abnormal chromosome numbers (usually polyploid) frequently occurred at metaphase I and later stages in squash preparations. Erichsen and Ross (2) showed that the mutated plants with the most striking abnormalities were cytoplasmic male sterile. The purpose of this study was to characterize the nature of the meiotic abnormalities from observations on paraffin sections which allow a study of the cells in situ and to compare the abnormalities associated with colchicine-induced cytoplasmic male sterility to those associated with cytoplasmic male sterility now in use for commercial production of hybrids.