Canola quality by handheld NIR spectrometer

Handheld NIR spectrometers can be used to predict some of the most important compounds that define canola quality (high oil and protein contents, low glucosinolate and chlorophyll contents, and fatty acid composition). It is important to test models on true external verification sets instead of relying only on cross-validation for model stability. For handheld NIR spectrometers, the compact design necessarily has small sample windows, necessitating multiple measurements in intact seeds to reduce sampling error. Ground/milled seeds or flour samples have lesser sampling effect. It is important to understand how the limited wavelength range of some handheld NIR spectrometers makes NIR spectrometers unsuitable for the prediction of certain quality parameters.

Enhancing food security in arid areas of Pakistan through newly developed drought tolerant and short duration mustard (Brassica juncea L.) Canola

Food security is the crucial global issue, especially in developing countries like Pakistan. Since edible oil is an essential food item, its persistent paucity in the country and huge import for meeting domestic requirements, has attained it second largest import item after petroleum products. The aim of present study is qualitative and quantitative evaluation of newly developed short duration and drought tolerant canola quality Brassica juncea lines ZBJ-06012 and ZBJ-08051 to overcome the unfavorable edible oil situation in the country. Thirteen lines were evaluated in randomized complete block design (RCBD) for seed yield, oil quality, maturity period and drought tolerance under different agro-climatic zones both in irrigated and arid areas across the Punjab province at eight locations in Micro Yield Trials during Rabi season 2012-13 and 2013-14. Presently, grown non-canola mustard varieties Khanpur Raya and Anmol Raya were used as check varieties. Brassica napus cultivars Punjab canola and Faisal canola were also included in the trials for comparison study of mustard and rapeseed genotypes. Data for all traits under observation was analyzed through Principle Component Analysis (PCA) to evaluate the best performing lines in irrigated as well as in rain fed areas. Principal Component Analysis showed first 2 PCs having Eigen value >1 explaining 76.4% and 72% of the total variation at irrigated areas and rain fed areas respectively. The mean seed yield was also compared by Least Significant Difference (LSD) test to study the significance at 5% probability level. Canola quality B. juncea lines ZBJ-06012 and ZBJ-08051 have shown good adaptability, early maturity, non-shattering, disease and drought tolerance traits with high yield potential in comparison with presently grown Brassica napus cultivars ?Punjab Canola? and ?Faisal Canola?. Due to these prominent features, these lines have a great scope for motivating farmers to grow canola quality B. juncea when compared with B. napus and non-canola B. juncea. Future challenges demand further development of high yielding, short duration and aphid tolerant mustard cultivars having high oil content and canola quality. There is a great potential of exploiting genetic variability in the existing B. juncea material to achieve the aforesaid goals by using conventional plant breeding techniques.

Broadening genetic diversity inBrassica napuscanola: Development of canola-quality springB. napusfromB. napus×B. oleraceavar.alboglabrainterspecific crosses

Rahman, H., Bennett, R. A. and Séguin-Swartz, G. 2015. Broadening genetic diversity in Brassica napus canola: Development of canola-quality spring B. napus from B. napus × B. oleracea var. alboglabra interspecific crosses. Can. J. Plant Sci. 95: 29–41. The narrow genetic base in spring Brassica napus (AACC) canola is a limitation for continued improvement of this crop. This research focused on broadening of genetic diversity in spring canola by using B. oleracea (CC). Seeds of B. oleracea contain high levels of erucic acid and glucosinolates, which are undesired in canola. Therefore, inheritance of these traits and the prospect of developing spring canola with allelic diversity introgressed from B. oleracea were investigated in B. napus×B. oleracea interspecific progenies. Zero-erucic plants in F2generation occurred at a lower frequency than expected based on segregation involving only the C-genome erucic acid alleles. Selection in F2to F3focused on zero erucic acid, while focus in later generation was for low glucosinolate and B. napus plants. In the F6, 31% zero-erucic families had low glucosinolate content. Flow cytometry analysis of the F8families showed no significant difference from the B. napus parent. Genetic diversity analysis by using simple sequence repeat markers from the C-genome chromosomes showed that the F8families received up to 54% alleles from B. oleracea. The results demonstrate the feasibility of enriching genetic diversity in B. napus canola by using B. oleracea.

Changes in the fatty acids in seeds of interspecific hybrids between Brassica napus and Brassica juncea

Mustard (Brassica juncea) accessions from Sri Lanka have a fatty acid profile (FAP) dominated by the undesired erucic acid. Therefore, it is necessary to develop B. juncea lines with canola-quality FAP, carrying reduced erucic acid (<1%) and increased oleic acid (>50%). To improve the FAP, B. juncea accessions were hybridised with spring-type canola (B. napus) varieties grown in Australia. Interspecific crosses between three B. napus cultivars (♂) and B. juncea accessions (♀) gave crossability of 50–65%. Embryo culturing on Lichter medium overcame post-germination barriers to obtain F1 plants. Culturing of ovules 21 days after pollination was successful and embryos were independent of hormones in the culture medium and directly developed into plants. Seeds of interspecific hybrids had a FAP different from parental values, particularly for oleic and erucic acids. The low oleic acid (13%) in B. juncea increased to 23–26% in hybrids and high erucic acid in B. juncea (41%) declined to 21–23% in hybrids. Linoleic and linolenic acids showed little variation from parental values. FAP of F1 hybrids shifted towards that of canola quality. The F2 seeds had zero erucic acid and high oleic acid similar to or exceeding the canola parent. Successful interspecific hybridisation of B. juncea and B. napus was confirmed by altered FAP and molecular markers. Embryo rescue in interspecific hybrids of B. juncea and B. napus is a simple, powerful biotechnological tool to increase genetic diversity and transcend species barriers to transfer desired genes, between the species. By implementing a crossing strategy, there is a potential to improve the FAP of Sri Lankan mustard towards the canola type.

Association mapping for phenological, morphological, and quality traits in canola quality winter rapeseed (Brassica napus L.)This article is one of a selection of papers from the conference “Exploiting Genome-wide Association in Oilseed Brassicas: a model for genetic improvement of major OECD crops for sustainable farming”.

QTL mapping by association analysis has recently gained interest in plant breeding research as an alternative to QTL mapping in segregating populations from biparental crosses. In a first experiment on whole-genome association analysis in rapeseed, 684 mapped AFLP markers were tested for association with 14 traits in a set of 84 canola quality winter rapeseed cultivars. For association analysis a general linear model was used. By testing significance of marker–trait associations against a false discovery rate of 0.2, between 1 and 34 associated markers were found for 10 of the 14 traits. Taking into account linkage disequilibrium between the significant markers, these markers represent between 1 and 22 putative QTL for the respective traits. The minimum phenotypic variance explained by the QTL for the different traits ranged from 15% to 53%. A subset of 27 markers were significantly associated with two or more traits. These markers were predominantly shared between traits that were significantly correlated at the phenotypic level. The results show clearly that in rapeseed, QTL mapping by association analysis is a viable alternative to QTL mapping in segregating populations.

ACS-C12 summer turnip rape

CS-C12 summer turnip rape (Brassica rapa L.) is a canola-quality, two-parent population-synthetic (Syn1) cultivar adapted to the short-season growing areas of western Canada. On average, it yielded 17% more than the Western Canada Canola/Rapeseed Recommending Committee (WCC/RRC) checks over 3 yr of testing and has high seed oil content.Key words: Turnip rape (summer), synthetic, cultivar description.