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Caphea glutinosa is a herbaceous, low-growing annual, bearing numerous attractive purple flowers and has potential as an ornamental and as a ground cover. Plants exhibit winter hardiness in USDA plant hardiness zone 8. Tissue culture techniques were developed to obtain large numbers of uniform plants. Whole leaf explants (approximately 1.0 cm²) callused profusely in MS (Murashige and Skoog, 1962) medium containing 84 mM sucrose, 1% (w/v) Difco Bacto agar and 8.8 μM N⁶benzyladenine. Shoot formation from calli was observed in the same medium 4 weeks after explanting. Detached shoots were rooted (100%) in half strength MS medium and rooted shoots were transferred to Promix® in the greenhouse 2 weeks after rooting. Tissue cultured plants flowered after 60 days in the greenhouse and no phenotypic differences were observed in floral or foliar characteristics.

The functional male sterile (fms) eggplant (Solanum melohgena L.) germplasm UGA 1-MS was crossed with two cultivars, `UGA 18 White' and `Florida Market' with normal anthers to derive F1, F2, and BC populations. Functional male sterility (fms) was governed by a single recessive allele. The gene symbol fms is proposed for this male sterile characteristic. The functional male sterility gene was linked to purple fruit color at the X/x locus. Our observations also revealed that the purple or violet color ware not only on the fruit peel, but also on the anthers and leaf buds if the eggplant fruit was purple or violet. In the transmission of parents and progenies of the cross of UGA 1-MS × `UGA 18 White', the purple line on the anther and leaf bud purple color ware tightly associated with fruit purple color. Thus, it is assumed that the allele X controls not only purple fruit, but also the expression of the purple line on the anther and purple leaf bud.