Breeding and Seed Production of Ornamental Crops (2+1)

 

Annual Flowers

Crop improvement work has also been taken up in a number of annual flowers. Significant achievements are listed below:

• Systematic hybridization and selection programme in Amaranthus has resulted in the development of eight cvs. namely 'Amar Kiran , 'Amar Poet , 'Amar Prithu , Amar Parvati', 'Amar Suikaran', 'Amar Tirang', Amar Raktab', and 'Amar Mosaic'. These represent various combinations of leaf shape and colour, and are entirely new to floriculture trade.
• A tetraploid cultivar 'Amar Tetra' was evolved through colchiploidy, 'Amar Shola', a hybrid amaranth is a selection from a cross within Amaranthus caudatus complex involving a grain type and an ornamental type.
• Evaluation of available germplasm of China Aster at IIHR Hessaraghatta has led to selection of 25 purelines developed by single plant selection. Of these AST-1 and AST-2 were found to be promising.
• In marigold, an outstanding F1 triploid developed at NBRI, Lucknow by using male sterile African diploid marigold (Tegetes erecta) and male fertile French tetraploid (T. patula) has performed well in all climates. F1 hybrid developed is dwarf, highly floriferous and free flowering. A few promising selections have also been made at UAS, Bangalore and PAU, Ludhiana.
• At NBRI, Lucknow, four free flowering hybrid verbena have been evolved by hybridizing V. tenuisecta and V. hybrida. The hybrid types obtained after repeated back crossing are summer hardy with genes that confer heat resistance. These verbenas are excellent both as for rockeries and for growing in beds. The hybrids can be propagated vegetatively (Khoshboo, 1979).
• In Zinnia, by recurrent selection from the irradiated seeds of Zinnia elegans a mixed coloured variety resistant to leaf curl virus has been evolved at IARI, New Delhi (Swarup and Raghava, 1974).