Department of Botany, Rajshahi University, Rajshahi, Bangladesh
*A part of an approved doctoral thesis submitted by the author to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research of McGill University, Canada.
Reanalyses of Flor's published data indicated that inheritance of rust resistance in flax (Linum usitatissimum L.) and of pathogenicity in flax rust (Melampsora lini (Pers.) Lev.) are more complex than was reported. He claimed that rust resistance in flax might be allelic or linked, and genes for pathogenicity in flax rust appear to be non-allelic and unlinked, but this does not seem to have been substantiated by his published data. Rust resistance in some flax varieties to some flax rust races appears to be controlled by complementary or epistatic genes which he did not describe. Rust resistance genes designated as multiple alleles by Flor appear to be either closely linked genes in repulsion, or epistatic, rather than allelic. Flor's data on selfing and crossing of flax rust races showed that the alleged homozygosity of races was, in most cases, based on inadequate populations and that pathogenicity in some races on some host varieties may be determined by epistatic genes.
