Published in Scientific Papers. Series A. Agronomy, Vol. LXII, Issue 1
Written by Florentina SAUCĂ, Florin Gabriel ANTON
Taking into account the major climatic changes recorded over the last 10 years, one of the main objectives of sunflower improvement is adaptability to environmental conditions, high productivity in extreme drought and burning conditions. Considering the global warming predicted by experts, the first step was to identify genotypes created at NARDI Fundulea for drought resistance. The new genotypes were obtained by interspecific hybridization of the Helianthus argophyllus crop rows. The wild species is recognized as having high drought resistance due to the highly developed root system and foliar pubescence that reduces evapotranspiration. Genotypes identified with increased drought resistance gave a high yield of seeds, a mass of 1000 seeds and high oil content (> 45%) were introduced as new genetic resources interspecific for the improvement of sunflower. The oil content was read using a nuclear resonator. Embryo rescue technique was used to speed up the breeding process. Thus, immature hybrid embryos were inoculated on germination media and the plants were transferred into pots with earth/sand (50/50) then in 10 kg buckets and were grown in the greenhouse, 2 generations/year were obtained.
[Read full article] [Citation]
