Aberrant plants in cauliflower: 1. Phenotype and heredity

For more than a decade, the number of "aberrant plants" showing various developmental abnormalities in cultivated cauliflowers has dramatically increased, thus hampering the registration of new varieties in some cases. The aberrant phenotype occurred during the cultivation period and in any variety type (pure line or F1 hybrid). The number of aberrant plants increased considerably from 1994 onwards. The rate of aberrant plants observed among F1 hybrids in the field was found to vary according to genotype and cultivation area. Besides morphological changes, aberrant phenotypes showed various patterns of evolution, i.e. stable, evolving toward another phenotype or reversing toward normality. Vegetative and seed progenies were obtained in order to investigate the genetic control of these phenotypic variations. Given that the aberrant phenotypes can evolve towards either normality or another abnormality during the life cycle of the plant and that the aberration capacity and/or the "acquired morphological disorder" can be transmitted to the progeny, an epigenetic hypothesis has been proposed for the determinism of this phenomenon. (Résumé d'auteur