THESIS

may not be the true hybrids because F1 hybrid plants have high pollen fertility and
morphological characters were not intermediate when compare to their parent (Table
15 and Figure 22).
Furthermore, when S. melongena was used as male parent, only one accession
S00860 of S. villosum (collected in Japan) was crossable with all accessions of S.
melongena may be due to the flower of S00860 is bigger than others accession of S.
villosum. However, only the hybrid fruits were obtained from the crosses between S.
melongena and S. villosum but their seeds were abortive. Moreover, most of them fell
before harvesting stage. In the case of embryo culture, the embryos of hybrid fruits
from S. villosum x S. melongena were rescued but no hybrid plants were obtained
(Figure 11). Similarly, the interspecific hybrids have also been made between S.
melongena and S. sisymbriifolium by embryo rescuing but they still fail to develop
within a few days (Sharma et al., 1984). Moreover, the protoplast culture and somatic
hybridization could be useful in overcoming the pre- and post- fertilization barriers
(Fournier et al., 1995) and was successful in several cases in previous literature. This
technique could be useful to rescue the hybrids from S. villosum and S. melongena.
Although the hybrid fruits were set, most of them fell before harvesting. In
case of embryo culture, the embryo of hybrid fruits from the two cross combinations;
S. villosum (S00860) x S. melongena (S00022), S. villosum (S00860) x S. melongena
(S00809) (Figure 11), were fail. Similarly, the interspecific hybrids have also been
made between S. melongena and S. sisymbriifolium by embryo rescuing but they still
fail to develop within a few days (Sharma et al., 1984).
The crosses between S. melongena x S. nigrum was successful only the
crossing from S00809 x TS02930 which 49.1 % fruit setting (Table 16). The crossing
between S00809 x TS02930 was ontained but this may not be true hybrid. This
finding is in contrast to result obtained by Singh et al. (2002) who reported that S.
nigrum were not crossable to S. melongena. However, interspecific somatic hybrids
were developed by fusing protoplast of S. melongena with S. nigrum L. to transfer
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