For healthy potatoes - Bayer CropScience

InVigor ® Hybrid Canola:
Where Vision plus expertise
breeds success
Hybrids are not just the fruit of expertise. In the case of canola, the creation of
Bayer CropScience’s hybrid business also required vision. Over the last 10 years,
Bayer CropScience built up “from scratch” what has become the number one
hybrid canola business in Canada with over 30% of planted canola acres. The
experts imagined, designed and delivered the SeedLink hybridization system.
SeedLink is a completely stable pollination control system that was the first of
its kind. Out in the field, SeedLink is combined with LibertyLink ® herbicide
tolerance.
They then built up a world class breeding program and set new heights
for performance in the field. They also work within a globally
evolving regulatory framework
to obtain commercial
Cross-pollination
approvals. Today, third party
national field trials show that
InVigor ® canola varieties are
on top of the pile in terms
of yield performance.
SeedLink
male
From breeding to productivity:
The corn example
Hybrids are one of the main contributing
factors to the dramatic rise in agricultural
output during the last half of the 20th century.
While “productivity” is a term that
connotes superfluous production in many
developed countries, for less privileged
regions of the world, further improvements
in productivity will be vital for their survival.
Modern corn hybrids substantially outyield
conventional cultivars and tend to
respond better to fertilization, which
makes them attractive to farmers worldwide.
In the US, hybrid corn, which was
first introduced in significant amounts in
1932, now makes up about 95 per cent of
total harvests. Indeed, today, nearly all the
field corn grown in the United States and
most other developed nations is hybrid corn.
SeedLink
female
SeedLink
hybrid
The next hybrid revolution:
Hybrid Rice
Expected Rice Demand in selected Countries
2000/2025 in M Tons (source FAO)
300
250
200
150
100
50
China
India
Indonesia
Bangladesh
Vietnam
Brazil
Thailand
0
214
264
106
145
49
64
32
44
20
26
12
16
12
15
2000
2025
10
14
Philipines
Rice is the most important cereal grown
globally and the major staple food for
about half of the world population. Within
the next 20 years, the global production of
rice needs to increase by 20 to 30% to satisfy
the demand of an expanding worldwide
population. Due to urban and industrial
development, this increase must be
achieved in the face of declining arable
land and water supplies. In this context,
improving yields has become an issue of
utmost importance and is the main challenge
for the rice community.
Hybrid rice is expected to play a major
role in breaking the current yield frontier,
thereby contributing to sustainable food
security. In the context of an increasingly
competitive environment, the higher productivity
of hybrid rice will also contribute
to improving the profitability and competitiveness
of rice cultivation.
In breeding, the use of hybrid vigor in
first-generation seeds is well known. However,
until about 30 years ago, its application
in rice was limited because of the selfpollinating
character of that crop. In 1974,
Chinese scientists successfully transferred
the male sterility gene from wild rice to
create the cytoplasmic genetic male-sterile
(CMS) line and hybrid combination. 4
The first generation of hybrid rice varieties
produced yields that were about 15 to
20 percent greater than those of improved
or high-yielding varieties of the same
growth duration. The most recent hybrids
now provide even higher yield benefits.
Hybrid rice seed enables farmers to
achieve significant yield improvements
over open pollinated or “inbred” varieties.
Rice hybrids combine the positive qualities
of both parents and have the potential to
yield 15 to 35% more than the best inbred
variety grown in similar conditions.
Hybrid rice has also proven to be hardier in
adverse growing conditions, especially in
unfavorable soil and climatic conditions –
such as saline soils and uplands.
As with other hybrids, the production of
hybrid rice seeds requires considerable
manpower and inputs, which explains why
hybrid seed tends to be more expensive
than inbred seed. However, hybrid rice cultivation
requires less seed per hectare than
inbred lines. All in all, the higher seed
price per kg is more than offset by lower
seed planting density requirements and
higher yields, making hybrid rice cultivation
very profitable for farmers.
4) In rice crops there are two systems for producing
hybrids referred to as 3-line and 2-line systems. The
most common is called CMS – or the 3-line system –
invented in China in the 70s and based on the transfer
by breeding of a naturally occurring “male sterility”
gene from wild rice to cultivated rice in order to create
a cytoplasmic male sterile (CMS) female line. The
2-line system referred to as environmentally genetic
male sterile (EGMS) involves a female parent which is
an EGMS female line (male sterility induced by thermo
sensitivity or photosensitivity).
18 COURIER 2/06