Before our proof-of-concept phase officially came to an end on June 30th, 2012 we succeeded in taking our efforts to the next level. Our first Jatropha hybrid backcrosses have germinated and reached seedling stage by mid June. This achievement marks an enormously important step forward for the Bionic Palm Jatropha breeding program.
The above picture shows the huge variability among our earliest BC1 seedlings. Over the coming months this collection will grow into the hundreds. We aim for a BC1 population incorporating all of our original parental germplasm and most of its cross combinations. Thus we will gain the maximum possible genetic variability base which we can later draw from when we breed for truly superior commercially usable hybrids.
What we define as our BC1 population is the result of back-crossing interspecific Jatropha curcas x Jatropha integerima hybrids into our parental Jatropha curcas accessions. This is a standard breeder’s approach if he wants to transfer specific traits (certain properties) from a related species into his species of interest. However, we are not into pedigree breeding at this time. Our primary aim is still to increase genetic variability of our population to the utmost possible.
We are looking for the greatest possible heterozygosity in these plants which can be assumed to be 100% in many cases. According to scientific research reports on the genetics of Jatropha this can only be achieved through an interspecific breeding route. While this kind of approach is very time consuming we do expect to gain a substantial shift in the Jatropha genetics.
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