Alkenyl Glucosinolate Levels in Androgenic Populations of Brassica napus

Abstract

AbstractThe levels of individual and total alkenyl glucosinolates in seeds of microspore‐derived spontaneous diploid plants from low by high and low by low glucosinolate parent crosses were examined to assess the utility of haploidy in canola breeding. The distributions of lines in the populations supported previous proposals that alkenyl glucosinolate levels are under multigenic control. Levels of all of the individual glucosinolates were positively correlated and were significantly reduced in canola‐quality material in comparison to rapeseed‐quality material. The populations of microspore‐derived lines from low × high crosses were skewed to high glucosinolate levels but the population from a low × low glucosinolate cross had a greater proportion of low glucosinolate lines. The former observations can be explained in terms of the dominance of genes for high glucosinolate levels in Brassica napus. The present findings contradict previous reports that androgenic lines have higher glucosinolate content than the parents and in fact, haploidy may select for low glucosinolate lines when crosses between low glucosinolate parents are used.