Indian Society of Genetics & Plant Breeding
Heterosis breeding has been commercially exploited in
sunflower and is expected to enhance productivity further.
This is the only crop which has more than 80% sunflower
growing area under the hybrids. The first hybrid (BSH-1) of
sunflower from public sector was released for commercial
cultivation in 1980. Since then the hybrid breeding program
has been quite successful and 29 productive hybrids were
developed by both public (18) and private sectors (11).
Inspite of these successes, problems in the form of
stagnating and unstable yields, genetic vulnerability and
susceptibility to various diseases are threatening sunflower
productivity in India. One of the major challenges would be
to develop newer hybrids for diverse situation and superior
to those presently grown in terms of seed and oil yield in
order to sustain the competitive ability of sunflower vis-avis other crops. There is a need for new CMS lines with
diverse cytoplasm having several desirable attributes like
dwarfness and early maturity. The diverse CMS lines are
expected to contribute towards the development of superior
hybrids producing high seed yield and oil content with
better heterosis and stability. The CMS base exploited in
the sunflower breeding programmes is narrow and there is
an urgent need for widening the CMS and restorer (R) line
base for enhancing the productivity and production of
sunflower.
Keywords: Achievements, bottlenecks, heterosis, sunflower hybrids
Year: 2013
Volume: 73
Issue: 2
Article DOI: 10.5958/j.0975-6906.73.2.019
Print ISSN: 0019-5200
Online ISSN: 0975-6906
H. P. Meena*, M. Sujatha and K. S. Varaprasad info_circle
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