A novel, multicolored flower trait with pink and purple sectors or pink and
purple flowers on the same plant was found in the soybean line LN89-5320-8
-53 that was derived from stocks containing the wp allele for pink flower c
olor. Some all purple flowered or all pink flowered lines derived from the
original mutable plant were inherited in a stable manner. However, many pla
nts that are all pink or all purple flowered do not remain stable and they
switch back to other phenotypes during inbreeding. High rates of somatic in
stability and reversions of the wp locus were observed during self-fertiliz
ation in which the percent of plants with multicolored flowers ranged from
0.3 to 28%. In contrast to the behavior of this trait during selfing, the i
nstability of the wp-m allele is not transmissible during outcrossing and s
tabilizes to the recessive pink phenotype in the F-2 plants, In addition, w
e demonstrate that other mutable alleles for seed color (r-m) and flower co
lor (w4-m) do not interact genetically with stable pink derivatives of the
wp-m allele when combined by crossing. In addition, the mutability of the w
4-m allele is also reduced in crosses to the pink line. Similarly, stable w
hite derivatives of the w4-m locus are not activated by the wp-m mutable al
lele. The opposite behaviors displayed by the wp-m mutable allele during se
lfing and outcrossing is unusual compared to other unstable soybean alleles
and to mutable alleles resulting from transposable element insertions and
excisions in many plant genes, Finally, we demonstrate that novel soybean s
eed coat colors are produced by a pleiotropic effect of the wp/wp flower co
lor genotype in combination with the homozygous i/i genotype for seed color
and that the wp, i, and t loci segregate independently.