Chapter 34

Distant hybridisation in plant breeding

Introduction
Cross between two different species or genera, is known as interspecific hybridisation or distant
hybridisation.
Cross between two genus is called intergeneric hybridisation.

History of distant hybridisation

The first authentic record of distant hybridisation for crop improvement is the production of a hybrid
between Carnation (Dianthus caryophyllus) and Sweet William (Dianthus barrbatus) by Thomas
Fairchild in 1717.
And interesting, inter, generic hybrid, Raphanobrassica, was produced by the Russian scientist
Karpenchenko in 1928 by crossing radish and cabbage.
The first inter generic hybrid was triticale, which was first produced by Rimpau in about 1890.
Triticale is the amphidiploid obtain from crosses between wheat and rye.

Barriers to production of distant hybrids

Inter varietal crosses are easier than inter generic ones.
The difficulties encountered in the production of intraspecific hybrids may be grouped into three
broad classes –
1) failure of zygote formation
2) Failure of zygote development
3) Failure of F1 seedling development

Failure of zygote formation - it could be due to the failure of fertilisation. Fertilisation often fails
because pollen tube is unable to reach embryo sac, and, as a result, fertilisation does not take place.
OR
Pollen tube may burst in the style.
OR
In some cases, the style of the species used as female is longer than then the pollen would reach. Eg
– maize x tripsacum.

Failure of zygote development

It could be due to following reasons
1) Lethal genes
2) Genotypic disharmony between genomes of the two parental species.
3) Chromosome elimination
4) Cytoplasmic incompatibility
5) Endosperm abortion

In case of endosperm abortion, hybrid plants maybe recovered by culturing Young hybrid embryos
on a suitable culture medium. It is called embryo rescue.

Dobzhansky – Muller type incompatibility syndrome - when the gene involved in the interaction is
an essential gene, it would lead to emobyo lethality. This type of hybrid incompatibility is generally
described as Dobzhansky – Muller type incompatibility syndrome.
In general, the species with short style should be used as female parent. Where this is not possible
or desirable, a part of the style of the female parent may be cut off to make it shorter.

Unreduced gametes in distant hybridisation

Unreduced gametes has the same chromosome number as that of parent produced it.
These are exploited in some crops like peanut, banana, potato, cassava, sweet potato, sugar cane
etc.

Unreduced gametes can be produced in following ways-

A. First division restitution.
B. Parallel spindle
C. Second division restitution
D. Omission of the second meiotic division (controlled by os gene)

In potato, ps gene is the most useful meiotic mutation, leading to 2n pollen production, while gene
os controls the production of 2n eggs.

Triploid block in potato is explained by EBN (endosperm,

balance number) hypothesis.

Penetrance - how many individuals out of

hundred will express a gene.
Expressivity - what percentage of a gene is
expressed in an individual.

Endosperm balance number hypothesis

According to this hypothesis, normal endosperm development occurs only when the maternal to
paternal EBN ratio is 2:1.
EBN is the relative strength of a genome to support endosperm development in seeds from
interspecific crosses.
EBN seems to be related to or even a consequence of genome imprinting. Genomic imprinting is the
process by which a set of genes is silenced in the male Gametes and different set of genes is
silenced in the female gametes.

by the way potato is a tetraploid crop (2n = 48).

Sterility in distant habits can be caused bye

i. Cytogenetic
ii. Genetic
iii. Cytoplasmic factors
Alien – addition lines
Alien addition line carries on chromosome pairs from a different species, in addition to the normal
somatic chromosome complement of the parent species.

In introgression, few chromosomes or genes from the related species are transferred into the
normal somatic a chromosome complement of another species.

Hybrid cotton varieties Varalakshmi is an internal specific hybrid between G. Hirsutum x G.

Barbadense; it was developed at the University of agricultural sciences, Bangalore.

G. Hirsutum = American cotton

G. Barbadense = European cotton

Inter family crosses are never possible

Achievements
Parbhani Kranti is a variety of bhindi is derived from the cross A. Esculentus cv. Sawani x A. Manihot.