II.23. Inducing productive and valuable mutants for plant breeding of spring barley.
V. T. Manzyuk and M. R. Kozachenko. Ukrainian Institute of Plant Industry, Plant Breeding and Genetics, Kharkov, U.S.S.R.
One of the main problems of plant breeding is the availability of desirable characters in plants used as initial material for hybridization. One of the ways of obtaining the new characters and new combinations of the known characters in plants is the method of inducing mutations with different highly active chemical and physical mutagens.
This investigation on radiation and chemical mutagenesis of spring barley resulted in obtaining a wide range of mutant characters. Some of the morpho-physiological mutants are of interest for plant breeding (V. T. Manzyuk, M. R. Kozachenko, 1972). A majority of them lie in the range of the known barley varieties. However, they may possess new combinations of characters and therefore may increase the diversity of initial material used for breeding.
The investigations of radiation (M3 - M8) and chemical (M3 - M4) mutant lines have shown that some of them possess practically useful characters (high resistance to lodging, proper plant height, ear length and density, proper plant growth and ripening rates, productive bushiness) and therefore are valuable for combinational breeding.
Biochemical studies have shown the possibility of developing mutants having increased or decreased (within some percents) grain protein or starch content. Being of no value for direct agricultural production, mutants with changed grain quality can be used as initial material for breeding forage and brewery barley cultivars.
Many morpho-physiological and biochemical mutants have been involved in breeding programs through the method of hybridization and mutagenesis. In 1972 F1-F5 hybrid seeds have been obtained from such crosses as: mutants x initial or other varieties, mutant x mutant, F1 hybrids x barley cultivars.
Mutant line estimations for several years have shown that some mutants are superior in productivity or individual valuable characters to initial forms. Some of them are superior in productivity to standard local cultivar Donezky 4 which is used in agriculture. A middle-ripening radiation mutant obtained from a very early-ripening initial cultivar is superior to the standard in productivity (11 to 12% higher), very high resistance to lodging (5 marks for mutant, 3-4 marks for standard) and longer ear.
Thus, investigations on induced mutagenesis have resulted in mutants that are highly productive and valuable for breeding. These morphophysiological and biochemical spring barley mutants are widely used for combinational breeding programs.
References:
Manzyuk, V. T. and M. R. Kozachenko. 1972. Obtaining valuable barley
forms by the method of radiation mutagenesis. Materialy vsesoyuznoi konferenzii
po ispolzovaniyu radiazionnoi tekniki dlja selskogo hozjaistva (Kishinew
- Oktober, 1972), 2. Kishinew, U.S.S.R.