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Experimental results are brought together to demonstrate that forage kale population improvement involving full-sib and selfed families can be done on an annual cycle, followed by production of a synthetic cultivar. Furthermore, this new breeding method compares favourably with the two successful methods used to date, namely triple-cross hybrid cultivars from inbreeding and crossbreeding programmes and open-pollinated cultivars from population improvement programmes. The key findings were that natural vernalization of kale in south east Scotland occurred by mid-December so that plants could be pollinated in a glasshouse with heating and lighting by the end of February and seed harvested by the end of May. The resulting full-sib or selfed families could be assessed in a field transplant trial in the same year, from June to November, thus completing an annual cycle. Self-pollination resulted in shorter plants with lower fresh-weight, dry-matter and digestible organic-matter yields, and undesirably higher contents of S-methylcysteine sulphoxide, the haemolytic anaemia factor, and the goitrogenic thiocyanate ion. As a consequence of digestible organic-matter yield being reduced by as much as 22%, the estimated optimum number of selfed parents in a synthetic cultivar was four to eight. Synthetic cultivars are expected to yield as well as triple-cross hybrids as there was no reduction in yield when the latter were open-pollinated.

Marrow-stem kale (Brassica oleracea var. acephala L.) is grown in the United Kingdom, New Zealand and similar climates, for feeding cattle and sheep during autumn and winter. Population improvement by half-sib family selection for higher digestibility and digestible organic matter yield, lower levels of antimetabolites, and clubroot resistance is described and analysed as a selection experiment. The foundation population consisted of 120 clubroot resistant plants from the 16 most resistant marrow-stem cultivars in an assessment of 96 cultivars of Brassica oleracea. At the end of the first generation of selection adequate resistance had been achieved. After five generations, dry-matter content and digestible organic matter yield had been increased, the latter without an undesirable increase in height. Indolyl glucosinolate (source of goitrogenic thiocyanate ion) content had been reduced, but not S-methylcysteine sulphoxide (the haemolytic factor) content. Selection differentials each generation were small and heritabilities of family means were moderate to low, making improvement per generation slow. It was demonstrated that faster progress could be made by switching from half-sib to full-sib family selection, as expected from theory. Multiplication of the half-sib family with the highest digestibility (DOMD%) achieved an improvement in this trait, without a reduction in digestible organic matter yield, and was marketed as cultivar Grampian.

The results are presented of two single seed descent (SSD) breeding programmes for swedes (Brassica napus L. var. napobrassica Peterm). The first programme produced cultivar Virtue and was done as part of a research programme on heterosis. It involved the production and trialling in 1991 of 95 F6 families from a single cross made in 1985 between lines derived from cultivars Criffel and Marian. Six F6 families were mass multiplied in polythene tunnels in 1992, using blowflies as pollinators, and trialled in 1993 and 1994 before Virtue was entered into National List (NL) trials in 1995. The second programme was done as a commercially funded breeding programme and involved the production and trialling in 1999 of 1,037 F6 families from 15 crosses made in 1993. Fifty F6 families were advanced to F7 in a glasshouse in 2000 and assessed in 2001. Six F7 families were mass multiplied in polythene tunnels in 2002 and trialled in 2003. Two cultivars, Gowrie and Lomond, from the cross between Airlie and Invitation, were produced from the programme and entered NL trials in 2004. The SSD was traditional in the sense that each advanced family was descended from a different F2 plant without selection and a glasshouse was used for the selfing generations. However, it differed from the schemes that have been operated for soybean and spring cereals in that it was not possible to grow two or three generations a year because of the vernalization requirements of swedes, and it was not possible to grow a large number of plants at really high density because the inflorescences needed to be covered with Glassine bags to prevent cross pollination. In yield trials over 4 years, Gowrie had the highest dry-matter yield (12.59 t/ha) of the three new cultivars, out yielded Magres (11.28 t/ha) and other shopping swedes, but was not as high yielding as cultivar Kenmore (13.44 t/ha) which had been produced by pedigree inbreeding with selection. A modified SSD breeding scheme is recommended in which family selection is practised at F3.

The use of the Commonwealth Potato Collection in potato breeding is set in the context of the evolution of the crop and the need to widen its genetic base by introgression and base broadening. The introduction of the potato to Europe and its subsequent worldwide spread is described. An introduction is given to the world's major potato genebanks, and the current status of the Commonwealth Potato Collection is presented. Material from this genebank has been extensively used to improve the potato. Work on wild species as sources of resistance to late blight started before the genebank was initiated, and since then CPC accessions have provided major R-genes and durable resistance to breeders, greatly benefiting growers and consumers of the potato. Progress identifying and exploiting resistance to viruses and potato cyst nematodes is described. New sources of further pest and disease resistance genes are present in the germplasm in the collection, offering the potential to overcome current and future pests and diseases. Use of the cultivated species in the collection for base broadening is described and discussed. The collection also harbours a wide range of quality traits of use to breeders, including variation for cooking and crisping, anthocyanins, carotenoids, ascorbate metabolism and others. As breeding and genetics become more precise, and as both the knowledge of biochemical pathways and means of analysing chemical composition advance, new ways of accessing this variation become possible. Possible strategies to achieve these goals are discussed.

The theory of linkage and QTL analysis in autotetraploids is summarised. Applications are presented to the analysis of quantitative disease resistance in the European cultivated potato, Solanum tuberosum subsp. tuberosum. The implications are discussed for practical potato breeding, practical QTL analysis and theory.

Two F2 triple test crosses, augmented with F3s, produced from crosses between different inbred lines of swedes (Brassica napus ssp.rapifera L.) were assessed in field trials at Dundee in 1988 and 1989,respectively. This paper reports the analyses of resistance to powdery mildew, neck length, growth cracks, sugar content and hardness; analyses of yield have been published previously. Additive genetical variation was found for all traits while non-additive variation was less important, the highest degree of dominance being 0.44 for hardness. There was evidence of additive × dominance and dominance × dominance epistasis for mildew and additive × additive epistasis for neck length and hardness. Significant,consistent reciprocal differences were found and these were particularly large for neck length and growth cracks. Sugar determination was carried out on the basic generations of the second cross, the parental lines of which showed large differences in concentration of glucose, fructose and sucrose. Directional dominance was found for high glucose but not for fructose or sucrose. The implications of these results for swede breeding are discussed and it is proposed that inbred cultivars would be a more practical option than F1 hybrids.

A potato (Solanum tuberosum Gp Tuberosum) breeding programme is described and analysed in which resistances to late blight [Phytophthora infestans (Mont.) de Bary] and the white potato cyst nematode (Globodera pallida) have been combined with a modest increase in yield and acceptable fry colour for processing. It began in 1991 and has involved cycles of crossing, selection between from 120 to 145 progenies (full-sib families), and clonal selection within the selected progenies. We have shown that the breeding scheme can operate on a 3-year cycle with limited within progeny selection, and on a 5- or 6-year cycle with more extensive within progeny selection. Six years are required when resistance to late blight is assessed in the tubers as well as the foliage. The more extensive within progeny selection is recommended once genes have been combined from sufficient parents to achieve one’s objectives. The yield increase after three cycles of indirect selection through breeders’ visual preference was only modest because it was operating against a decrease which would occur in the absence of selection. A practical improvement in the scheme would be to increase the number of progenies assessed to over 200, given the moderate to high heritabilities of the progeny and clonal tests. But this would require a considerable effort because the success rate achieved with the potato pollinations was typical at just over 30%. In the fourth cycle we showed how new breeding objectives and germplasm could be accommodated whilst continuing to maintain progress, something that is important in any long term breeding strategy.

Four generations of half-sib family selection for yield of digestible organic matter have been completed, from an initial population which included marrow-stem kales, thousand-head kales, curled kales, Brussels sprouts and cabbages. Relative to the mean yields of two control cultivars the population means were: 106% (gen0), 122% (gen1), 128% (gen2), 111% (gen3) and 103% (gen4). These initially encouraging and then disappointing results are discussed along with suggestions for improvements in the population improvement scheme, particularly with respect to the assessment of genotype-environment interactions.

Two experiments were done to evaluate the use of single-row plots for assessing digestible organic-matter (DOM) yield.

Seed set after self-pollination confirmed that 19 lines of Brassica napus were self-incompatible. Eight lines, H, J, Q, W, X, K, P and Z, were fully cross-compatible. Line R was cross-compatible with these lines but often had a low seed set as female parent. These results are consistent with the activity of nine distinct S-alleles. Line S was cross-incompatible with K, as was V with P, and F with Z. With each of the lines A, E, B, O, G, L and M at least one reciprocal difference was found so that the number of additional distinct S-alleles could not be inferred, but there must be a minimum of seven.

Two experiments were done to evaluate the use of single-row plots for assessing dry-matter yield of swedes. In the first experiment the correlation between the dry-matter yields of 20 cultivars in unguarded single-row plots and those in guarded double-row plots was poor (r=0.39). It was improved (r=0.58) by adjusting the single-row plot fresh-weight yields for inter-plot competition, through an analysis of covariance in which the covariate was the mean of the adjacent plot yields, and then estimating the pure stand dry-matter yields. However, the correlation was still lower than that between unguarded double-row plots and the guarded double-row plots (r=0.73), and this latter correlation was also improved (r=0.82) by adjusting the fresh-weight yields of the unguarded plots for inter-plot competition.