A preliminary report on meiotic irregularities in diploids and diploid interspecific hybrids in coffee

Studies on meiosis in F1 of Coffea excelsa x C. eugenioides and C. liberica x C. eugenioides and the parent plants are presented in the paper. Parent plant in C. liberica is highly regular. Plants in F1 show irregularities such as failure of pairing, unequal distribution of chromosomes, chromatin bridges and precocious cytokinesis whereas the parent plants in C. excelsa and C. eugenioides show only chromatin bridges occasionally. The irregularities in F1 are considered as the probable cause for the gametic sterility and sterility in fruit-set. The formation of chromatin bridges in the parent plants of two diploid species indicate that detailed studies of these and other species in the genus Coffea are important and may throw more light on the full significance of this phenomenon