Origin – distribution of species – wild relatives and forms – breeding objectives – major breeding procedures for development of hybrids / varieties.

1. Submitted to:
Dr.Kaushik kumar Panigrahi
Asst.Prof. on Plant Breeding and
Genetics.
Submitted by:
Subala Padhan
Adm.no:14C/14
3rd year B.Sc(Ag)

2. SUNFLOWER
Scientific name:Helianthus annus
Family:Composite
Chromosome number(2n):34

3. Sunflower
Introduction:
• Sunflower is a most important oil crop in world.
• Sunflower oil is used as a substitute for mineral oil in various applications such
as fuel or an oil for hydraulic system.
• It is an important oil seed crop. Oil content ranges from 46-52 per cent and is of
high quality having non-cholesteral properties.
Center of origin: America
Distribution: USSR, Romania, Canada, USA In India this crop is introduced in
1969 from USSR. In India it is cultivated in Tamil Nadu Karnataka, Maharashtra
and Andhra Pradesh,Punjab and Haryana

4. Progenitor:
Helianthus petiolaris
Helianthus gigants
Wild species: Helianthus hirsutus
Helianthus rigidus
The genus Helianthus comprises of 67 species. Two species H .annuus and
Helianthus tuberosus are cultivated as food plants genus has basic
chromosome number of 17 and diploid, tetraploid and hexaploid
species are found.

5. Cultivars of sunflower:
a)Giant types: 6 - 14 feet tall. Late maturing, Large heads 12 - 30”
in diameter, seeds large, white or grey or with black stripes. Oil
content is very low. E.g. Mammoth Russian.
b)Semi dwarf varieties :
Medium tall - 4 ½ to 6 feet, Early maturing. Heads 7 - 9” in
diameter. Seeds smaller, black, grey or striped. High oil content
35%. E.g. Jupiter, Pole star.
c) Dwarf types:
2 to 4½ feet tall. Early maturing. Head size 5½ - 6½ “ diameter.
Small seeds, high oil content 37%.
E.g. Sunrise, Morden, Co1, Co2

6. Breeding objectives:
1)Oil content:
• Since the work of Pustovoit, high seed oil content has always been a
breeding objective (at least for oilseed sunflower, for confectionary, a low
oil content is required).
• Up to about 1970, it was necessary to press seed to determine oil content,
but with the development of very rapid, non-destructive measurement by
NMR, oil content, which is highly heritable, has become one of the easiest
characters for the breeder. Modern varieties show 50% oil regularly under
good field conditions.
• Ranges 38 to 48%. Complex character yield and oil content are negatively
correlated. To increase oil content the shell must be thin.

7. 2)Protein content and hullability:
• The other question concerning seed quality is the importance given to
seed protein content, since there is generally a negative correlation
between oil and protein contents.
• The possible variation in cultivated sunflowers, independent of oil content
is not well known but this topic may become of importance (Dauget et al.,
2016).
• The alternative method to increase the protein content in seed meal is to
hull seed. A European project (France, Spain, and Italy) was devoted to
this subject in the 1990s. Techniques were developed to measure
hullability on small quantities of seed, environmental conditions were
found to be important,but there was moderate heritability although
genotypes with thick hulls were the most easily hulled (Denis et al., 1994).

8. 3)Breeding for self fertile lines:
• Protoandry and self incompatability mechanism operates in sunflower. Hence
hand pollination is necessary. To avoid this self fertile lines can be evolved.
4)Breeding for fatty acid:
• A further important quality character for sunflowers (and
other oil crops) is the proportion of the different fatty acids in
oil.
• The high oleic mutation obtained by Soldatov (1978) was one of the first
artificial mutations to have a favourable effect(although negative in its
action since it blocked enzymatic conversion to linoleic acid) and to be
incorporated into a widely grown crop.

9. 5)Minor constituents:
• Concerning minor constituents of sunflower seed which
could be of interest, such as tocopherols and phytosterols, the
question is whether varieties with increased contents would
provide a significant increased value, for compounds that only
represent about 0.03% of sunflower seed weight.

10. 6)Pest and insects resistance variety:
• The crop is attack by different insect and pests.Which causes severe
losses in production.
• So it become necessary to developed insect pest resistance variety to
increase yield.
• Different pests attack to sunflower crop a are Heliothis , Grass hopper
Jassids.

11. 7)Disease resistance variety:
• Maharastra hybrid susceptible to powdery mildew. Hence ban is
there. Powdery mildew,rust, charcoal rot, Alternaria . Wild species like
H.hirsuta are moderately resistance to Alternaria.
Downy mildew:
• This disease, caused by the oomycete Plasmopara halstedii, has
been known for more than 50 years in Canada and Russia.
• Until a satisfactory method, in laboratory or field, is developed, major
genes will continue to be the basis in breeding
for downy mildew resistance.

12. Phomopsis:
• Phomopsis stem canker (Diaporthe helianthi) is the example for sunflower
of a recent adaptation of the parasite to this crop.
• Quantitative but quite strong resistances to phomopsis were soon
identified, in Serbia and then in France (Viguie et al., 2000) and, although
phomopsis resistance is still an essential part of sunflower breeding
programmes, the disease can be said to be under control.
• QTL have been identified (Bert et al., 2002) but since disease reactions
vary significantly with climatic conditions, even if markers are obtained
within resistance genes, it is questionable whether it would be possible to
rely only on laboratory work in breeding for resistance.

13. Sclerotinia:
• Sclerotinia wilt or rot is one of the most widespread disease problems for
sunflower, a problem for breeders since the start of the crop.
• Sclerotinia sclerotiorum can attack all crops except grasses and cereals
and no complete resistance is known in sunflower.
• In recent years Sclerotina has not caused much yield loss as a whole. This
may be due to the movement of the sunflower crop to dryer conditions
and, with climate change, it might even be suggested that this disease will
not be a major problem in the future.

14. 8)Height,earliness,changes in architecture or
vegetation cycle:
• Plant height at flowering, flowering date and per cent humidity of seed at
harvest are characters regularly measured in sunflower breeding
programmes, mostly to avoid very tall or very late material and to have a
good knowledge of an inbred line or a hybrid.
• In the 1980s, there was considerable work on dwarf material, measuring
only 1 m even in good growing conditions. Several sources of dwarf
genes were available, including that from gamma-mutation (Leclercq and
Phillipon, 1978).

15. .
• One of the ideas for developing short sunflowers was that they could be
sown at higher density and thus increase yield, with a crop of many small
heads, covering the ground more quickly in spring and maturing more
rapidly, permitting an earlier harvest.
• The other way to obtain such a change in plant type might be to change
earliness characters and cropping seasons. In areas of the world with little
risk of frost, modern sunflower varieties s can be sown in the autumn (for
example in Morocco in November) and harvested in April.

16. 9)To develop short duration varieties suitable for dry
land and irrigated conditions:
• Dryland successful in black soils only.
• In red soil under rainfed it is not successful.

17. Breeding methods:
1)Introduction :Modern from Canada.
2)Mass selection:In this method phenotypically
superior plant are selected and harvested from a
population and there seed are mixed to continue new
variety modern .Useful for characters which are highly
heritable.
E.g. Plant height, disease resistant.

18. .3)Hybridization :
Currently there is increase emphasis in development of sunflower hybrid
released in India in 1980. for production of hybrid seed cytoplasmic
genetic male sterile lines are available in isolated filed hybrid seed
production programme is taken BHS-1 (CMS-234*RHA-274).
4)Heterosis breeding :
Development of inbred lines and crossing them to harness heterosis was
first done as early as 1920 in Russia. During 1970 cytoplasmic geneic
male sterility was identified in wild types and obsolete cultivars. Now
this system is being extensively used for production of hybrids.
Eg:BSH-1
APSH -11

19. Breeding centre:
• Directorate of oil seed Research (DOR) Hyderabad.
• All India coordinated sunflower improvement project (Bangalore).