CORN BREEDING 14 & 



This is because both the yellow and the lead colors, being in the 

 endosperm, which may be influenced by the male parent, display 

 their color through the transparent hull or bran of the white 

 mother plant. 



But in the next generation, these hybrid seeds produce grains of 

 various colors or shades. 



130. Dominance of certain qualities in hybrids. Ac- 



' cording to Mendel's law, certain pairs of opposite quali- 

 ties are not inherited in mixtures or blends, but separately, 

 every individual descendant showing one or the other of 

 these opposing qualities. The quality that shows in the 

 greater number of the descendants is called dominant, 

 while the quality showing forth in the smaller number of 

 descendants of the cross is called recessive. 



Experiments have shown, according to East (Conn. State Agr. 

 Expr. Sta. Kept. 1907-1908, Part VII, p. 41), that in corn the 

 following characters.are dominant over their opposites : 



Yellow is dominant over white color of kernels. 

 Red is dominant over white color of kernels. 

 Purple is dominant over white color of kernels. 

 Flint quality of grains is dominant over dent. 

 Flint quality of grains is dominant over sweet. 

 Dent quality of grains is dominant over sweet. 



Certain dominant qualities show in the current cross ; among 

 these are yellow or purple color of grains (when crossed on 

 white varieties), and flintiness of grains, whether crossed on dent 

 or on sweet corn. As a rule, the recessive grains, or those showing 

 no effect of the cross in the second hybrid generation, are practi- 

 cally pure as to that quality, and these pure white or pure dent 

 grains of the second hybrid generation subsequently come "true to 

 seed." But the grains showing the dominant quality, yellow 

 color or flint structure, cannot thus be selected as p*ure, because 

 many of them have been influenced, though imperceptibly, by the 

 recessive character (white color or dent structure). In other 



