Breeding prospects of Lunaria annua L

Abstract Lunaria annua is a biennial cruciferous oil seed crop. The seeds contain 30 -35% oil, which consists of 67% long chain fatty acids (44% erucic acid

Progress in a Crambe cross breeding programme

Crambe (Crambe abyssinica Hochst. ex Fries) is an annual cruciferous oilseed crop with a high content of erucic acid (55-60%) in the seed oil. Since 1990, a breeding programme in crambe has been carried out at the DLO-Centre for Plant Breeding and Reproduction Research. Three accessions, two early flowering American breeding lines and a late flowering European land race, were used in a crossing programme. Five generations were raised. From the F3 generation onwards selection was performed for agronomical characteristics. Estimation of broad-sense heritability values on the basis of variation between F3 lines revealed high values for thousand seed weight, moderate for plant height, earliness and seed oil content and low for seed yield and number of seeds produced per square metre. In comparison to the reference populations, only limited progress in seed yield was obtained by selection. Improvement of seed yield performance was also observed in the reference populations after growth of the subsequent generations. It was concluded that for Dutch environmental conditions, selection for earliness might be an effective tool to improve the total yield of seed oil. This conclusion was confirmed by the selection of early flowering lines with a high seed oil content and an improved fatty acid composition

Combining ability for seed yield traits of Chenopodium quinoa breeding lines

For a better understanding of the inheritance of seed yield traits in Quinoa ( Chenopodium quinoa) Willd., a half-diallelic crossing experiment with six diverse but uniform breeding lines was conducted. True hybrid plants were detected by means of differences in panicle colour in 14 out of the 15 crosses performed. The agronomic performance of 14 F_2populations and six parental lines was evaluated in field trials on fertile clay soil. General and specific combining ability of the lines (GCA and SCA) were estimated. Highly significant differences in GCA effects were found between the lines for plant height at maturity, early flowering, early maturity, seed yield and thousand seed weight. Significant SCA effects were only found for plant height at maturity. However, SCA effects were rather small and accounted for 7% of the total variance. The finding of large GCA effects and low SCA effects suggests that best selection results could be expected from crosses between the agronomic best performing genotype