Spontaneous reversion to fertility was studied in the progeny of a cytoplasmic male-sterile (CMS) Brassica napus cybrid containing recombinant B. napus/Ogura radish mitochondrial genomes. This reversion is concomitant with the disappearance of a 2.5 kb NcoI fragment present in the mitochondrial DNA of Ogura radish, and of CMS cybrids derived from plants carrying Ogura cytoplasm, and absent in the mitochondrial genome of normal Brassicas and fertile cybrids. This specific fragment hybridizes to a 1.4 kb transcript found only in male-sterile plants bearing an Ogura derived cytoplasm.