2.Genic Male Sterility (GMS)

Gentic Male Sterility (GMS)
Gentic Male Sterility (GMS)
  • GMS is normally governed by nuclear recessive genes ‘ms ms’
  • The A line is sterile because it has ‘ms ms’ gene
  • The B line is similar to A line but for the heterozygous condition (Ms ms)
  • The R line is completely fertile (Ms Ms)
  • This type of male sterility is used in tomato for the production of hybrids
  • Male sterile line will be having white translucent anthers, while fertile line will be having yellow, plumpy anthers
  • At the time of flowering, each and every plant is to be examined for identification of sterile and fertile lines
  • They are to be tied with different colour threads
  • At the time of harvest, sterile line and fertile line are to be harvested separately

The difficulties in the use of GMS are
  1. Maintenance of GMS requires skilled labour to identify fertile and sterile lines
  2. Labeling is time consuming
  3. In hybrid seed production, spot identification of fertile line and removing them is expensive
  4. Use of double the seed rate of GMS line is also expensive
  5. High temperature leads to break down of male sterility in some crops

Last modified: Sunday, 1 April 2012, 10:36 PM