Coauthored the 1995 genetic investigation of Flying Dragon dwarfing and its probable mutational origin.
Cheng and Roose reported a five-year field comparison of Cutter Valencia trees grafted on open-pollinated Flying Dragon seedlings. The grafted trees separated into 34 dwarf and seven nondwarf trees; the authors’ marker results and segregation analysis supported a single dominant dwarfing gene in heterozygous Flying Dragon. They found Flying Dragon identical to nondwarfing trifoliate-orange accessions at the 40 tested isozyme and RFLP markers and inferred that it probably arose as a mutation without later sexual recombination.
World of Citrus