InnoSun - Increasing oil yield and improving oil quality and disease resistance in sunflower using new innovative breeding methods
Funding | Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL via FNR) |
Duration | 2017 – 2021 |
Research partners | TU München, Lehrstuhl für Pflanzenzüchtung, Prof. C.-C. Schön, Dr. C. Lehermeier; TU München, Fachgebiet für Biotechnologie gar-tenbaulicher Kulturen, Prof. B. Poppenberger-Sieberer |
Industrial partners | KWS Saat SE, Dr. S. Wieckhorst, Dr. M. Ouzonova; TraitGenetics GmbH, Dr. M. Ganal |
Team | |
The InnoSun project aims to increase the competitiveness of the sunflower, thereby broadening the range of oil plants for the sustainable production of renewable raw materials for the German and European market. This goal can be achieved by combining unique genetic resources, which the InnoSun partners have developed in preliminary work, with innovative breeding strategies that allow the simultaneous improvement of several traits (yield, oil quality, disease tolerance).
The InnoSun consortium of industry and academia is targeting the following research areas
(i) genotypic and phenotypic evaluation of experimental populations for oil content, oil quality, sclerotinia tolerance and earliness, (ii) development of statistical models for multivariate genomic selection, (iii) identification of a new genetic source for breeding high oleic sunflower, (iv) development of low-cost SNP genotyping methods, (v) establishment of multivariate prediction in sunflower breeding.
The significant breeding improvement of sunflower will increase its competitiveness and contribute to the conservation of biodiversity in German and European agriculture.