Project title

Development of an environmentally friendly F1 hybrid breeding technology

Coordinator

Dr. Chun-Ming Liu, Plant Research International, The Netherlands

Aims of the project

F1 hybrid is a proven breeding tool since it gives both a better yield of crops and natural protection of breeders' 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 embryogenesis 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, HybTech will use molecular approaches to regulate pollen development 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 into the environment.

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