Breaking the breeding cycle: Parthenogenesis paves the way for faster sunflower breeding
Plant Science Research WeeklyHybrid crops are key to modern agriculture, offering higher yields, improved stress resilience, and greater uniformity through heterosis (“hybrid vigor”), where offspring from two different inbred lines outperform their parents. However, producing homozygous inbred lines for stable hybrid seed production…
Exploring the parental origin of potato dihaploid DNA
The Plant Cell: In a NutshellAmundson et al. investigate the fate of parental DNA in crosses that produce uniparental dihaploids
By Kirk Amundson and Luca Comai
Background: Plants carrying only the chromosomes of one parent, i.e. haploids, are very useful for research and breeding. Certain crosses are known to yield haploid…