MATERNAL INHERITANCE IN THE SOY BEAN 



H. TERAO 



The Imperial Agricultural Experiment Station, Tokyo, Japan 



The soy bean, Glycine hispida Maxim., shows as differ- 

 ent types two cotyledon colors, yellow and green. The 

 beans with yellow cotyledons have two types of seed-coat 

 colors, namely, green and yellow, while the beans with 

 green cotyledons have always green seed-coats. 1 The in- 

 heritance of these types of cotyledons and of seed-coats 

 has been proved by the author's experiments to be ma- 

 ternal. A brief notice of the experiments will be given 

 in the following. 



The green and yellow colors of cotyledons and seed- 

 coats are obviously attributed to chlorophyll, which, 

 on the ripening of the beans, is either changed from, green 

 into yellow or remains green. Further, according to the 

 author's observations, the chlorophyll in the vegetative 

 parts of the plant shows the same behavior as the chloro- 

 phyll of the cotyledons; in other words, the leaves and 

 stems of the varieties with yellow cotyledons turn to a 

 yellow color when they are gradually dying coincident 

 with the ripening of the beans, while those of the varieties 

 with green cotyledons remain green sometime after the 

 dying of the whole plant. These facts suggest that the 

 two types of cotyledon colors may represent two kinds of 

 chlorophyll, one which changes into yellow under certain 

 physiological conditions and one which is not so affected. 

 The chlorophyll of the seed-coats, however, seems to be- 

 have somewhat differently from the chlorophyll in all 



