Rapid production of recombinant barley yellow mosaic virus resistant Hordeum vulgare lines by anther culture

Summary In a winter barley breeding program for barley yellow mosaic virus (BaYMV) resistance, the resistant six-rowed cv. Franka was crossed to 17 susceptible and two resistant cultivars, three of which were tworowed. A total of 233,445 anthers of the 19 hybrids and their parents were cultured and 831 green plants regenerated. Anther culture responsiveness varied greatly between genotypes, and the responsiveness of F₁hybrids was generally related to that of the more responsive (high) parent. On average, 3.6 green plants were recovered from 1,000 cultured anthers, almost twice as many as in comparable spring barley experiments. Androgenetic green plants were tested for their reaction to mechanical inoculation of BaYMV. In crosses of resistant parents, all the cross progeny proved to be resistant, which indicates that both parents carry identical gene(s). In the crosses of the resistant cv. Franka to susceptible parents, an average of 62% of the androgenetic progenies were resistant, which indicates that probably more than one gene is responsible for Franka's BaYMV-resistance. From the crosses of Franka to two-rowed cultivars, 282 androgenetic plants were produced. When 132 of these were tested for their reaction to BaYMV, 79 (59.8%) were resistant, and 30 of the latter were shown to be two-rowed recombinant lines. Doubled haploid lines are field-tested for other agronomic characters including grain yield and its components.