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Cleistogamy of oilseed rape, a way to prevent cross‐fertilization between adjacent fields
Author(s) -
Leflon Martine,
Hüsken Alexandra,
Kightley Simon,
Pinochet Xavier
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
plant breeding
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.583
H-Index - 71
eISSN - 1439-0523
pISSN - 0179-9541
DOI - 10.1111/j.1439-0523.2010.01828.x
Subject(s) - erucic acid , pollen , biology , agronomy , limiting , pollen source , human fertilization , pollination , botany , brassica , pollinator , mechanical engineering , engineering
With 3 figures and 4 tablesAbstract At the field scale, pollen flow between adjacent fields limits the potential of coexistence of different farming production systems, especially for allogamous crops like oilseed rape whose pollen is disseminated by insects or wind. In this article, we examine the efficiency of cleistogamy in an oilseed rape line which showed between 90% and 99% of flowers closed at flowering, in limiting deposition of allo‐pollen. Five trials were established, consisting of two adjacent blocks, the one sown with the cleistogamous low‐erucic acid line and the other with a classically flowering high‐erucic acid line, used as source of contaminating pollen, itself artificially contaminated with a 1% mix of cleistogamous plants. Analyses showed that cross‐fertilization rates of cleistogamous plants, estimated through erucic acid contents of seeds collected from them, were lower than those generally observed in oilseed rape: it averaged 10.1% on isolated plants within the erucic blocks, reached to the maximum 14% immediately adjacent to the erucic block, then decreased exponentially at higher distances. Cleistogamy appeared therefore as one imperfect means of gene bio‐containment.