Thesis
2 New Ways to Improve Cherry Breeding
Washington State University
Master of Science (MS), Washington State University
2022
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7273/000004982
Abstract
Washington state is the biggest producer of sweet cherries on the US market, producing close to 500 million dollars’ worth of sweet cherries in 2021. The sweet cherry breeding program (CBP) at Washington State University has been a source of improved genotypes for growers across the country. A key constraint to the overall efficiency of the CBP is poor seedling generation from bi-parental crosses. This research addresses two issues that cause low seed yield in the program; poor fruit set from crosses on emasculated flowers and low seed germination in early maturing genotypes. We investigated the potential for plant growth regulators involved in ethylene sensing and production to improve fruit set when applied pre-emasculation. Our experiments showed that genotype response varies widely across treatments. Some might benefit from PGRs while some might experience a decrease in fruit set. In the second experiment, we evaluated the potential for embryo rescue to increase the seedling number from crosses between early-maturing genotypes. This work compared different basal media, phytohormones and developmental stages of the explant on embryo survival. The experiments showed no overall differences between the treatments. Rather, the genetic background of the crosses that were made had the greatest effect, and there were also significant treatment-cross interactions. Overall, this research shows promise for being able to increase the efficiency of the CBP by improving fruit set in the emasculated crosses and increasing survival rate with an embryo rescue protocol.
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Details
- Title
- 2 New Ways to Improve Cherry Breeding
- Creators
- Rainier Wilhelm Peters
- Contributors
- Per H. McCord (Advisor)Matthew D. Whiting (Committee Member)Kelsey Galimba (Committee Member)Michael M. Neff (Committee Member)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- Horticulture, Department of
- Theses and Dissertations
- Master of Science (MS), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University
- Number of pages
- 65
- Identifiers
- 99901019939401842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Thesis