VEGETOS: Eine internationale Zeitschrift für Pflanzenforschung

Change of Cotyledon Number in Red Leaf Beet (Beta vulgaris L.var. cicla L) and Altered Vascular Bundles of Tricotyledonous Seedling

Ying-jie Tao, Ke-you Li and Quan-le Xu

Change of Cotyledon Number in Red Leaf Beet (Beta vulgaris L. var. cicla L) and Altered Vascular Bundles of Tricotyledonous Seedling

Seedlings of monocotyledon, tricotyledons and tetracotyledons were compared to those of dicotyledonous wild type of red leaf beet (Beta vulgaris L. var cicla L). These seedlings were progenies of the mother plant that was transformed using floral dip method, but detected no ectopic expression of the target gene. Paraffin sections of the shoot tip showed that the shoot apical meristem (SAM) in the tricotyledonous seedlings changed to trilateral compared to long oval meristem in the wild type; meanwhile, three leaf primordia appeared alternately with cotyledonous primordia in tricotyledonous seedlings compared to two leaf primordia of the wild type, which suggests the direct role of cotyledons in determining where from the primordia of the first leaves arise. Paraffin sections and cleared tissues of hypocotyls and roots showed two lines of protoxylem poles in hypocotyl of wild type compared to three in tricotyledonous seedling. These observations suggested the correlated patterns of vascular and cotyledon number.