PROCEEDINGS OF THE CLUB 
MEETING OF OcTOBER 15, 1930 
The meeting was called to order at the New York Botanical 
Garden at 3:30 P.M. by President Sinnott. Minutes of the meet- 
ing of October 7 were read and approved. Thirty-one members 
were present. 
The following people were unanimously elected to menber- 
ship in the club: Miss Minna Koch, Hunter College, New York 
City; Miss Kathleen Muchemore, 596 East Nineteenth Street, 
Brooklyn, New York; and Miss Dorothy Meier, Box 59, Johnson 
Hall, Columbia University, New York City. 
Professor Edmund W. Sinnott gave a talk on “Fruit Shape 
Inheritance in Cucurbita.” 
He has inbred a large number of strains of Cucurbita pepo 
for the past fifteen years and has about thirty lines which are 
essentially homozygous. During the past few years he has paid 
particular attention to the inheritance of fruit shape as shown 
by the results of crosses between various of these pure lines. The 
common disc of “scallop” type of fruit, very much wider than 
long, has been crossed with several types of spherical fruits. In 
every case, the disc type is dominant in the F,. The Fz shows 
approximately 3/4 disc to 1/4 sphere, thus indicating that the 
difference between these two fruit shapes is due to a single men- 
delian factor. 
In crosses between two spherical fruited lines of different an- 
cestry, the F, was found to be all disc fruited, and in the F3 there 
appeared 9/16 disc, 6/16 sphere and 1/16 elongate fruit. This was 
explained as due to the operation of two flattening factors, each 
of which when alone produced a spherical fruit. When both were 
men together in a plant, their effect was accumulated, re- 
Sy ting in a disc shape. When both were absent, the double re- 
cessive elongate type appeared. Further evidence was presented 
showing that in addition to these and other flattening factors, 
there are operative factors which tend to elongate the fruit, thus 
acting in an exactly opposite direction to the flatteners. The 
concept is developed that fruit shape is determined by the bal- 
ance or equilibrium between factors for flattening and factors for 
elongation. All of these seem to be inherited in a simple mendel- 
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