Castor Plants

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INDUCTION, IDENTIFICATION, SELECTION AND EVALUATION OF SUNFLOWER MUTANT PLANTS The mutation methods in sunflower breeding have become more and more useful in connection with hopes of improving oilseed quality for nutritional uses and technical applications that substitute fossil petroleum for continuous supply and superior biodegradability of oleochemicals over petrochemicals in industrial and non-food uses . Concerning resistance to diseases, one of the important objectives in sunflower breeding, a promising method is "in vitro" selection of resistant mutants and then, the regeneration of a resistant plant. Unfortunately, the regeneration techniques of this plant species are still in the research stage, including controlling of diseases resistance…show more content…
is a potential cash crop. It is an easily adaptable crop growing successfully in tropical, subtropical and even some temperate zones . It can be easily cultivated on well-drained soils and does not need high soil fertility. Much of the harvested crop is derived from 'semi-wild1 plants and not from commercially cultivated fields . The various undesirable characters of the castor plant are the deterrents to its wide cultivation. These characters could be changed to encourage its wide commercial production and make it a high income cash crop of major economic importance. Efforts to encourage castor plant production in the Philippines have been limited in extent and scope due to the major problems of low yield potential, the late and non-uniform maturity and tallness of most varieties grown. The sources of variability needed for the improvement of this crop are very limited. Therefore conventional breeding methods were not expected to accomplish considerable progress. Induced mutations could increase the variability and the appearance of desirable characters which could contribute to the high yield potential of this crop. This research was conducted to develop castor plant cultivar(s) with improved plant type (compact plants with reduced number of branches) for better adaptation and yield performance as well as to develop dwarf, early and uniform in maturity cultivar(s) for dense population planting with the use of induced…show more content…
seeds were subjected to physical or chemical mutagens to induce desirable mutations to be used in the development of cultivar(s) with improved plant type and other desirable characters for high yield. Optimization tests determined that 500, 600 and 700 Gy were the doses to be used in the field tests. The optimum conditions established by laboratory studies for the efficient use of chemical mutagens are puncturing the seed coat at the caruncle point of attachment, presoaking the seeds for 24 h and soaking the pretreated seeds in the chemical mutagen solution for 4 h. No chlorophyll mutations nor deformed leaves were observed in the MI of seeds treated with chemical mutagens. However, most of the mutations induced in the NaN3 treatments could have been deleterious resulting in few surviving progenies in the M2- Selections were made in the physical mutagen treated M2 and M3 progenies for the best plants with one or a combination of desirable characters, like earliness in flowering (50 days after emergence (DAE), or less), earliness in maturity (120 DAE or less), 100 cm plant height or less to the first raceme at maturity, 30 or more female flowers in the raceme and 25 or more developed capsules per raceme. Among the promising selections, the four mutants identified were 257-38-9 for spineless capsules, 9-1-7 for synchronized branching and flowering with uniform maturity of the capsules, 30-8 for dwarf and determinate plant with two racemes borne at the same

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