Brassica napus – a new oilseed crop in India

1 1 2
Shyam Prakash , S.R. Bhat and S.S. Banga

1 National Research Centre On Plant Biotechnology, Indian Agricultural

Research Institute, New Delhi 110012 – India,
e-mail: shyamprakash62@rediffmail.com
2 Department of Plant Breeding, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana
Punjab – India, e-mail: surin11@rediffmail.com

ABSTRACT
Rapeseed –Brassica napus is not traditionally grown in India. Introduction of
exotic accessions from Canada and Europe was not a success because of
their very late flowering and very poor seed set. Artificial synthesis using
early and productive indigenous strains of B. rapa ssp. oleifera and B.
oleracea var botrytis generated a spectrum of morphological and
physiological variants including early and productive forms of B. napus which
form the basis of breeding programs in India. Varieties suitable to Indian
conditions have been bred and released with a yield potential of 2 t/ha.
Hybrids such as PGHS-21 and Hyola PAC401 have been marketed with 20
percent yield advantage. More CMS-fertility restoration systems of
alloplasmic origin based on diverse cytoplasms are in various stages of
development. The current researches are aimed at developing hybrid
cultivars with less vegetative growth, yellow seed colour, resistance to pod
shatter and canola quality. At present B.napus is cultivated on a very limited
area in India and is likely to be grown for quality oil and cake in niche areas
in north-western part of the country.

Key words: Brassica napus – artificial synthesis – hybrid cultivars –

cytoplasmic male sterility

INTRODUCTION

Traditionally rapeseed – Brassica napus is not grown in India. The idea to

cultivate it as an oilseed crop in India was initiated around 1967 because of
its resistance to fungal disease – white rust and high seed productivity. A
number of accessions from Europe and Canada were screened in 1968 for
their suitability to cultivation in India. These exotic accessions were found to
possess high degree of resistance to white rust but being very late to flower
(115 – 125 days against 45 – 50 days in Brassica juncea) resulted in poor or
no seed set. Many of the strains did not flower and remained in vegetative
state due to their thermo- and photo-senstivity. Thus, there was a need to
create new plant variability suitable to Indian conditions (Prakash,1980).
One of the approaches was to artificially synthesize strains of B. napus
from early indigenous constituent parents to develop early maturing
productive strains of B.napus (Prakash and Raut, 1983). Accessions of B.
rapa ssp. oleifera were hybridized to B. oleracea var botrytis and a spectrum
of variations was obtained following chromosome doubling of AC hybrids.
The hybridization success rate was very low (0.29 %) and hybrids were
obtained only in one direction viz. B.rapa x B.oleracea. . As a result
synthetics have only B.rapa cytoplasm. Additional variability was obtained by
allowing open pollination on F1 interspecific hybrids. Non-homologous
recombination between A and C genome chromosomes has been implicated
in their origin, since these hybrids have up to 8 bivalents and some of these
are of allosyndetic origin. Synthetics had very poor seed set in early
generations (7-29%) because of disturbed meiosis and genetic
incompatibilities between A and C genomes. Univalents (2-4) and
multivalents (3 quadrivalents) were frequent and persisted up to A4
generations. Seed fertility gradually improved and A6 generation plants had
normal seed set (90-94%) as a result of more regular meiosis and high
selection pressure. These synthetics, in general, closely resembled natural
B. napus forms in morphology. One of the typical features was the very long
nature of inflorescence axis. The desired plant type in the synthetics have
early to medium flowering period, high number of siliques, less vegetative
growth and mature in 145 – 155 days (Prakash and Raut, 1983). These
experiments were the beginning of introduction of B. napus as an oil crop in
India and these synthetics became the integral part of Indian breeding
programmes.
At present, B. napus is cultivated on a limited area ( around 40,000 ha )
in north-western part of India in the states of Punjab, Rajasthan, Himachal
Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir where the winter temperatures are quite
low. The crop is grown mostly as a pure crop. Major factors which prevent its
further spread are the low economic returns in comparison to wheat, pod
shattering at maturity and susceptibility to alternaria blight and mustard
aphid. However, high degree of resistance to white rust and higher oil
content favour its cultivation in comparison to B.juncea. Currently, the major
improvement goals include enhancing productivity (F1 hybrids), reduced
production costs (herbicide resistance) and value addition (canola quality,
extra high oleic acid).
In late seventies, the first variety of B. napus GSL-1 was introduced
which had an yield potential of about 2.0 t / ha with a maturity period of 165
days and containing 44 % oil content. Later in 1995, GSL-2 was released
with the added advantage of resistance to atrazine herbicide. This was
developed in the background of herbicide resistant Canadian variety Triton.
Two more varieties Neelam and Sheetal were also released for cultivation.
Subsequent attempts to develop a variety having canola quality, early
maturity and high harvest index resulted in the release of the variety GSC-5.
It has higher yield potential (2.5 t / ha) and matures 15 days earlier than the
current varieties and is much shorter.
Simultaneous efforts to develop F1 hybrids were initiated during late
eighties. Polima and tournefortii based CMS systems were used as initial
cytoplasmic male sterility sources. But due to its environmental instability and
unacceptable yield penalty polima system was not pursued. However, a
synthetic strain ISN-706 developed by Prakash and Raut (1983) has now
been identified as a stable maintainer for polima CMS ( Sodhi et al. 1993).
Intensive test crossing of CMS (tournefortii) B. napus with a large
germplasm collection has helped in identification of fertility restorers for this
CMS system in the primary gene pool of B. napus (Banga 1995). Fertility
restoration was later found to be governed by two complementary Rf genes
(designated as Rft1 and Rft2). It was also possible to identify AFLP marker
(EACC/MCCT 105), located close (18.1cM) to the major gene Rft1.
Diversification of CMS lines based on B. oxyrrhina, Diplotaxis catholica, D.
erucoides, Moricandia arvensis, Enarthrocarpus lyratus and Erucastrum
canariense cytoplasms are at various stages of completion (Prakash 2001).
These male sterile lines exhibit normal growth, bear flowers with excellent
nectarines and possess high female fertility. Introgression of restorer genes
is in progress from respective cytoplasmic donors through chromosome
engineering. CMS systems are also being extended to ‘00’ inbreds.
 Identification of Rf genes helped in commercial release of first CMS
based hybrid PGSH 51 of B. napus in 1994 with a yield potential of about 2.2
t/ha, 15 to 20 percent higher than the predominant pure line variety GSL-1.
Besides the public sector, private sector is also actively involved in promoting
cultivation of B. napus hybrids. Hyola PAC401 of Advanta India has been
released for general cultivation in northern parts of India. Its characteristics
such as tolerance to white rust, resistant to frost, high yield (3.0 t/ha) and
high oil content (41-44%) and a maturity period of 150 days make it an ideal
crop in place of wheat. Further, the nutritious oil cake of B. napus with very
low levels of antinutritional glucocinolates is sought after by the animal feed
industry and thus fetches the farmer a higher return on his investments.
In conclusion, B. napus as a crop has only limited prospects in the Indian
context as it can be grown only in low temperature regime with assured
irrigation. Since a large proportion of the area under mustard in India is under
rainfed conditions, replacement of the hardy, well adapted B. juncea with B.
napus does not seem feasible in the near future. However, B. napus holds
promise for the production of canola quality varieties because of the ready
availability of ‘00’ genotypes. Such ‘00’ genotypes are not yet available in B.
juncea.

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