Silflower: Breeding Techniques

Domestication of Silflower began 20 years ago at The Land Institute in Kansas, where plants were selected for their agronomic traits such as yield. To avoid the loss of genetic diversity associated with domestication, beneficial genes from Silfower from across its native range should be incorporated in the breeding program. We are working on creating a multiparent population based on seedlings obtained from David Van Tassel of The Land Institute; the goal of this project is to obtain a population with varied genetics and phenotypes to avoid genetic bottlenecking which may serve as a mapping population for genomic work and future breeding.

Our goal is to develop silflower as a perennial oilseed crop for the Upper Midwest, and to support silflower breeding efforts across the country. In Minnesota, we are working to select for silflower plants which are easier to grow and harvest, have larger seeds, and yield well in our climate. Our group has also led an effort to evaluate silflower varieties across several states, to determine how environments as diverse as northwest Minnesota and southeast Texas impact silflower growth and performance. We are also testing methods to grow and develop silflower more quickly, allowing us to speed up our breeding progress.