Inheritance of Leaf-Characters of Capsularis Jute

The male sterile seed parent, Ribbon, was crossed with the pollen donor ‘Tripura’, a non-cultivated strain of Corchorus capsularis L. Leaves of ‘Ribbon’ were ribbon-like with bitter taste, while ‘Tripura’ possessed linear-lanceolate, deepserrated and non-bitter leaves. The F₁s showed normal leaf-shape indicating complementary action of more than one pair of genes. In F₂, the segregation of leaf-shape character suggested digenic inheritance. Bitter taste was dominant over non-bitter and was single-gene controlled. Combined scoring of leaf-shape and bitterness characters showed trigenic inheritance and complete absence of linkage between leaf-shape and bitter/non-bitter character.