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The Development of Perennial Sunflower for Wildlife and Food Use
The Development of Perennial Sunflower for Wildlife and Food Uses
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Michael Kantar1, Kevin Betts1, Bob Stupar1, Brent Hulke2& Don Wyse1
1Department of Agronomy and Plant Genetics, University of Minnesota
2USDA-ARS Northern Crop Science Laboratory
The objective of this research is to use current genetics
and plant breeding techniques to introgress genes for
perennial habit from Helianthus tuberosus L. (2n=6x=102)
into domesticated sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.,
2n=2x=34). H. tuberosus is part of the secondary gene
pool of sunflower and has been used as a donor of many
disease resistance traits, most notably Sclerotina
resistance, making it an excellent donor for perennial
habit. Because of previous success in gene transfer from
H. tuberosus, we believe we will be successful in
transferring perennial habit into annual sunflower, thus
creating a perennial sunflower with high enough yield to
attract blackbirds diverting them from commercial fields
and eventually with enough yield for oil production.
Abstract
Abstract
kant0063@umn.edu
(612-910-3865)
Funding for the this project came in part from the University
of Minnesota Agricultural Experiment Station, The Land
Institute and the Pioneer Hibred University Fellowship
Funding
Funding
NSA Research Forum January 13-14, 2010
Experimental questions
Experimental questions
•Do perennial habit traits correlate with seed
characteristics and fertility traits?
•Which agronomic traits are we breeding
against?
•How complex is the inheritance of perennial
habit?
•What agronomic traits are linked to
perenniality?
To answer these questions we propose to look
at perenniality as a trait controlled by a few
major genes with quantitative modifiers, as
there may be different degrees of perenniality.
A robust perennial hybrid would have a better
suite of genes than a minimal perennial hybrid
making it a better parent for future crosses.
In order to assess the validity of a quantitative
perennial habit extensive phenotyping must be
done in the interspecific F1 hybrid population.
To this end 187 F1hybrids amd 18 H. tuberosus
parents were planted in a completely random
design with three replications in St. Paul. Plants
were scored for tuber number, tuber size tuber
weight, individual tuber weight, pollen
viability, flowering time, flower number,
branch number, branching type, and spreading
ability.
Crossing Scheme
Crossing Scheme
Phenotypic correlations
Phenotypic correlations
Heritability
Heritability
Flow Cytometry
Flow Cytometry
Dormancy
Dormancy
It is difficult to break dormancy in the tubers of the
interspecific hybrids, which are the basis of the perennial
breeding program at the University of Minnesota. This causes
it to be difficult to get more than one generation of plants per
year, or to evaluate multiple crosses per year. The most
common method of breaking tuber dormancy has been
extended exposure to cold (2̊C), here we attempted three
different hormone treatments, ethylene, gibberellic acid and a
cytokinin, as well as a control with no hormone treatment. In
these treatments the gibberellic acid induced sprouting >90%
of the time while the other treatments did not produce
sprouting in the tubers.
References
References
Cox, T.S. , M. Bender, C. Picone, D.L. Van Tassel, J.B. Holland, E. C.Brummer, B.E. Zoeller, A.H. Paterson, and
W. Jackson. 2002. Breeding Perennial grain crops. Critical Revie ws in Plant Sciences, 21(2): 59-91.
DeHaan, L.R., D.L. Van Tassel, and T.S. Cox. 2005. Perennial grain crops : A synthesis of ecology and plant
breeding. Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems, 20(1), 5-14.
Ellis, JR and JM Burke. 2007. EST-SSRs as a resource for population genetic analyses. Heredity 99:125-132.
Heesacker, Adam, Venkata K. Kishore, Wenxiang Gao, Shunxue Tang, Judit h M. Kolkman, Alan Gingle, Marta
Matvienko,
Alexander Kozik, Richard M. Michelmore, Zhao Lai, Loren H. Rie seberg, Knapp, Steven J. 2008. SSRs and
INDELs mined from the sunflower EST database: abundance, polymorphisms, an d cross-taxa utility.
Theor Appl Genet,
117: 1021-1029.
Hu, F.Y, D.Y. Tao, E. Sacks, B.Y. Fu, P. Xu, J.Li, Y.Yang, K. McNally, G.S. Khush, A.H. Paterson, and Z.-K. Li. C
2003. Convergent evolution of perenniality In rice and sorghum. PNAS, 100(7), 4050-4054.
Hulke, Brent S. and Donald L. Wyse. 2008. Using Interspecific hybrids with Helianthus tuberosus L. to transfer
genes for quantitative traits into cultivated sunflower,H. annuus L. Pr oc. 17th International Sunflower Conference
729-731, Cordoba, Spain.
Background
Background
In 2001, native H. tuberosus from UMORE Park,
Rosemount, MN, was collected and transplanted to the St.
Paul Agricultural Experiment Station, where it remains as
a living collection. H. tuberosus is native to Minnesota
and highly tolerant of Minnesota winters. In 2003,
interspecific hybrids between the H. tuberosus plants and
inbred lines contributed by the USDA Sunflower breeding
program were created. Nearly all of the hybrids exhibited
perennial habit, moderate fertility, and heterosis for above
ground biomass production. In order to improve the
agronomic and seed oil quality and quantity of the hybrid
population it was decided to backcross the population with
elite sunflower inbred lines from the USDA Sunflower
breeding program. Previous work had determined that
even one backcross results in a high degree of sterility in
the populations (unbalanced triploid genome) and
complete loss of perennial habit (Hulke and Wyse, 2008).
A novel solution to address these problems was developed
where the F1hybrid was backcrossed to a newly
developed tetraploid form of the annual inbred lines,
which resulted in a tetraploid BC1F1population (crossing
scheme). This population provided 8 genotypes that were
able to survive the winter of 2006-2007 (Hulke and Wyse,
2008). This indicated that the loss of perennial habit in
backcross populations might not be the result of
segregation distortion in the interspecific hybrid
populations, but rather a result of small population size
and an unbalanced (triploid) genome (Hulke and Wyse,
2008). Further, it shows that the genes for perennial habit
in a backcross population can be retained.
Embryo rescue of BC2F1 and BC1F2 plants
Embryo rescue of BC2F1 and BC1F2 plants
Next Step
Next Step
Tetraploid annual lines have been developed from the inbred
lines HA89 and HA434 in order to make crosses that result in
more meiotically stable offspring with the interspecific
perennial sunflower.
Correlations and 95% confidence intervals for Correlations between traits
Trait Flower
number Branch
number Branch
Score Spread
Score Pollen
fertility Tuber
number Tuber
weight
Branch number 0.49
Branch Score 0.28 0.51
Spread Score 0.65 0.29 0.13
Pollen Fertility 0.02 0.04 0.07 0.05
Tuber number 0.05 -0.14 -0.14 0.25 -0.05
Tuber weight (kg) 0.17 -0.09 -0.15 0.37 0.01 0.81
Individual tuber weight (g) 0.15 0.02 0.16 0.14 -0.02 -0.27 0.13
* significantly positive correlations are highlighted in yellow negative correlations in green
Trait Heritability
Tuber number 0.65
Tuber weight (kg) 0.59
Branch Score 0.54
Spread Score 0.23
Flower number 0.21
Branch number 0.17
Pollen Fertility 0.10
Individual tuber weight (g) 0.05
*heritability based on parent offspring regression from 1000
bootstrap simulations
Trait Values
Trait Values
Trait Mean Median Range
Flower number 49.12 ±1.33 48±1.69 2-107
Branch number 18.9 ±0.4 19 ±0.42 3-37
Branch Score 2.52 ±0.05 2.67 ±0.18 1- 4
Spread Score 3.28 ±0.05 3.33 ±0.03 1-5
Pollen Fertility 0.38 ±.01 0.37 ±.01 .05 – .78
Tuber number 152.17 ±7.1 145 ±9.98 11-509
Tuber weight (kg) 0.65 ±0.03 0.62 ±0.04 0.05-1.76
Individual tuber weight (g) 5.10±0.21 4.51 ±0.14 1.6-24.73
•Use the stable tetraploid annuals to continue making
crosses
•Continue embryo rescue efforts to increase population
numbers
•Since pollen fertility and tuber characteristics are not
correlated we will more easily select for both favorable
tuber and fertility characteristics
•Increase backcross population size
This is the same plant (BC1F2) that was rescued in
September and is currently growing in the greenhouse