Correlated Seed and Tuber Dormancy in Potatoes

Abstract

THE seeds of temperate-zone wild plants are usually dormant at maturity and germinate only after a lapse of time and/or the application of certain more or less specific dormancy-breaking conditions. By contrast, the seeds of cultivated plants are commonly non-dormant, and this must usually represent a response to human selection; loss of dormancy has thus been a significant episode in the evolution of many cultivated plants. Since few genetical investigations of dormancy in crop plants have been reported, an investigation of the cultivated potatoes was begun in 1959; the finding that, in this group, seed and tuber dormancy are correlated, an observation of some general and practical interest, prompts a brief description of the leading results so far obtained.