Characterization of some safflower genotypes and their hybrids, and development of advanced breeding lines

The objectives of this study were to determine some agricultural and technological traits of 45 F1 hybrid combinations obtained by line (5) × tester (9) method and their parents at the experimental field of Field Crops Department, Faculty of Agriculture, Tekirdağ Namık Kemal University, in 2018, 2019 and 2020 and investigate genetic diversity among them by using SSR method. The field experiment including 45 F1 hybrid and their 14 parents was established based on randomized complete plot design with three replications. Fifteen agronomic and technological characters such as days to emergence, days to flowering, days to maturity, plant height, branch number, head number, head diameter, number of seeds per head, 1000 seed weight, seed yield, hull ratio, oil content, oil yield, linoleic and oleic acid content were investigated in the study. Furthermore, the general combination abilities for the parents (line and tester) and the special combination abilities, heterosis and heterobeltiosis for the hybrids were calculated and those values were used to speculate promising lines for the future breeding projects. Based on the results of the study, genotypes with high seed yield and oil content in both F1 and F2 generations were BA12, BA18, BA24, EC4, EC5, EC6, EC11, EC18, EC20 and EC21 hybrids. The promising genotypes will be grown in the next generations together with the other hybrid genotypes in order to ensure sufficient variation, and the selection will be started in the later generations such as F3 and F4. Six out of 10 SSR markers used in the study to determine genetic diversity were found polymorphic. It was calculated as the total number of alleles 28, average effective alleles (Ne) 3.172, observed mean heterozygous (Ho) 0.548, expected mean heterozygous (He) 0.680, mean coefficient of self-realization (Fit) 0.187, mean total genetic variance (Fst) 0.593, mean polymorphic information content (PIC) 0.664 and mean Shannon information index (I) 1.251 within polymorphic 6 SSR markers. Considering the average PIC values of the markers, it is seen that they can be used in future molecular studies for safflower. In addition, in future breeding studies, promising lines can be created by crossbreeding among genotypes that are genetically distant from each other in order to provide genetic variation.