Sunflower Breeding for Resistance to Fusarium

Abstract

Fusarium fungi have grown from a minor pathogen of sunflower crop to a major problem of sunflowers in Russia. The aim of this work was breeding for resistance to this new major pathogen, combining field and laboratory testing in the framework of VNIIMK hybrid sunflower breeding program. Four segregated hybrid combinations selected on the basis of their field resistance to different pathogens were used as breeding material. Three of them were doublecross combinations: F3 R-14 × (VK-591 × VK-539), F4 VK-623 × (HA-385 × VK-653) and F4 (VK-678 A × VK-464) × VK-541, the fourth one was a cross F3 VK-680 × O.P. variety Leader. It was shown that combination of laboratory testing and individual selection can rapidly improve the Fusarium resistance of a segregated population - the share of families without plants with Fusarium damage symptoms was 62.5% among the selected plants offspring while only 18.2% of such families were found in the breeding nursery the next year after selection. As a result, a number of new breeding lines were developed that exhibited no Fusarium symptoms in the field. © 2006, by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston. All rights reserved.