Marker-assisted breeding of abaca (Musa textilis Nee) for the development of high fiber quality and virus resistant cultivars

Date

2017

Abstract

Abaca (M. textilis Nee) is one of the strongest natural fibers used worldwide as a raw material in textiles, cordage, and specialty paper industries. Being endemic in the Philippines, abaca provided the country a new international market generating approximately $80 million annually. With the effort to increase the genetic pool of abaca indispensable for breeding, samples were collected from Luzon down to Mindanao totaling 86 accessions. This was 51.7% increase from the 56 accessions in the field. These accessions were evaluated using agronomic and molecular characterization. Comparing the results of the actual tensile strength data, tensile-associated markers and on-site field disease evaluation, AbuabLabo, Natural Tobacco, Lausigon Red and Inilabo have the greatest potential as parents for the hybrids. Since the collected abaca varieties did not mature at the same time only the data on molecular characterization and some agronomic data were gathered. Ditawani No. 2, Tagakan and Lagrada's Farm Wild 1, due to their potentially good characters as exhibited by molecular information, may be promising parents for future abaca breeding programs. As of to day, there are 51 hybrids in the field. They were planted last July 2, 2016, during the rainy season. Field planting was delayed due to the lack of rainfall/irrigation and high temperature reaching 35 deg C. The abaca plants would take approximately 19.8 months from planting to maturity, thus agronomic valuation will be done on the first quarter of 2018. However, the hybrids were able to show promise in the molecular analysis. In fact, comparing the results from both the resistance gene specific and tensile associated markers hybrids A1, A5, F1, H1, J (except J2), Q4, Q5, Q10, O2, S and R already showed positive results. The remaining component of the project is the evaluation of the hybrids' tensile strength and resistance to abaca diseases in the field and screen house conditions, which will be done after we have selected the hybrids with good agronomic yield and resistance to abaca bunchy top virus under field condition which is schedules on the first quarter of 2018.

Document Type

Article

Pages /Collation

59 leaves

En – AGROVOC descriptors

MUSA TEXTILIS; ABACA; VARIETIES; FIBRES; QUALITY; TEXTILES; PULP AND PAPER INDUSTRY; DISEASE RESISTANCE; GENETIC MARKERS; BREEDING METHODS

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