Abstract:
Sunflower crop has an important place in the word agriculture, due to many advantages, as the capacity to release high
seed yield and good oil content.
For improving different characteristics, by breeding methods, we need sources as genes donors.
Genetic resources in sunflower, which could to be used as base of creating new inbred lines or as donor sources for
genes controlling different characteristics, in the inbred lines breeding, are made up of old or new varieties, hybrids and
inbred lines, induced mutations, synthetic populations, as well as sunflower wild species.
Herbicide resistant crops are becoming increasingly common in agricultural production. A wild population of annual
Helianthus annuus was the source for developing cultivated sunflower genotypes resistant to imidazolinone and
sulfonylurea herbicides. There have been created inbred lines as sources for the genes transferring in the elite lines.
The quality of sunflower oil can be modified by means of induced and spontaneous mutations. The sunflower lines,
sources for high oleic acid content, there have been obtained from a Russian variety, created by chemical mutation.
Using these sources we transferred genes for improving the oil quality, in our elite lines, resistant to herbicides.
Broomrape, caused by Orobanche cumana Wallr. is a parasitic weed which infests sunflower roots, causing severe crop
losses. Since broomrape is a highly variable parasite, the breakdown of resistance is a frequent phenomenon and
multiple sources of resistance are needed. Genetic resistance to broomrape it was introduced in the sunflower crop from
the wild relatives (H. tuberosus, H. maximiliani, H. debilis). The inbred lines created by interspecific hybridization
have been used for the improvement of resistance to this parasite, of the lines resistant to imidazolinone and
sulfonylurea herbicides.
