HYBTECH: Development of an environment-friendly F1 hybrid breeding technology

• Research unit: EU RFP
• Project number: 99.0884

Key words (English)

Pollen; fermentation; petunia; PDC; ALDH;
Agriculture; Economic Aspects; Environmental Protection; Life Sciences; Resources of the Sea; Fisheries

Alternative project number (English)

EU project number: QLK5-2000-00902

Research programs (English)

EU-programme: 5. Frame Research Programme - 1.1.8 Generic R&D activities

Short description (English)

See abstract

Partners and International Organizations (English)

Coordinator: Plant Research International (NL)

Abstract (English)

F1 hybrid is a proven-breeding tool since it gives crops better yield and natural protection of breeder's rights. It relies on parental homozygosity and, in most crops, reversible male sterility. The former ensures the uniformity of the hybrid crops, the latter allows large-scale hybrid seed production without emasculation.

Instead of repeated self-pollination, a rapid way to reach 100% homozygosity is through microspore embryo-genesis followed by chromosome doubling to produce doubled haploid (DH) plants.
Unfortunately, this is only feasible in a few crops and cannot combine with male sterile system.
As a multidisciplinary consortium, Hyb Tech will use in vivo metabolic starvation to establish a widely applicable breeding technology that can combine reversible male sterility and production of DH plants. It will provide a rapid way to generate new Fl varieties without releasing transgenic pollen to the environment.

References in databases (English)

Swiss Database: Euro-DB of the
State Secretariat for Education and Research
Hallwylstrasse 4
CH-3003 Berne, Switzerland
Tel. [phone]
Swiss Project-Number: 99.0884