Sexual transfer of Arabidopsis DNA to Brassica napus

Out of 400 reciprocal crosses made between Brassica napus and Arabidopsis t haliana, 200 maternal B. napus flowers produced 31 seeds and 10 seeds devel oped when A. thaliana was used as the female parent. Of the latter, three s eeds successfully germinated but did not develop into mature plants. In con trast, plants from all 31 seeds generated from B. napus were established. D NA from these 31 plants was analysed by 18 probes mapped to the A. thaliana genome, two selectable marker genes and one A. thaliana species-specific r epetitive probe. It was found that one plant had identical restriction frag ments to A. thaliana with two of the 21 probes used. The gene flow within B rassicaceae is discussed in light of this result.