Paternal plastid DNA can be inherited in lentil

Restriction fragment analysis was used to study the inheritance of chloroplast DNA (cpDNA) in F1 progeny from crosses between Lens culinaris ssp. orientalis and L. culinaris ssp. culinaris. Twenty-five combinations of 11 restriction enzymes and three heterologous probes from Petunia hybrida cpDNA were used to screen six accessions of L.c. culinaris and one accession of L. c. orientalis for restriction fragment length polymorphisms (RFLPs). No variation in cpDNA was observed within the subspecies L. c. culinaris, but the L. c. orientalis accession was unambiguously distinguished from all six L. c. culinaris accessions by two RFLPs. Of ten F1 progeny from L. c. orientalis x L. c. culinaris crosses, nine had only maternal cpDNA restriction fragments but one F1 plant inherited cpDNA fragments from both parents. Nuclear DNA inheritance was biparental in all ten F1 progeny.