The use of statistical methods to evaluate winter oilseed rape doubled haploids for industrial purposes

Doubled haploid (DH) production is valuable technology in modern plant breeding of oilseed rape. Doubled haploids can be produced from in vitro isolated and cultured microspores, which, instead of forming pollen, develop into haploid embryos. Either spontaneously or after artificial doubling of chromosomes, the arising resulting plants are diploid and fertile, and 100% homozygous for all genes. Biotechnological DH production offers various advantages for plant breeders, including the possibility to obtain homozygous lines rapidly, as well as easy selection due to the absence of heterozygosity. A DH line with desirable agronomic characters can be chosen and introduced into a breeding program as a result of selection for a combination of optimum characters. The study presents the application of uni- and multi-variate statistical methods to evaluate winter oilseed rape DH lines studied in a series of six experiments repeated at different localities and over a number of years. These methods made it possible to estimate individual DH lines under various environmental conditions, including the assessment of the content and stability of two different fatty acid compositions. The aim of the study was to classify and select the best oilseed rape genotypes with regard to the requirements of chemical and biodiesel industry concerning fatty acid compositions at simultaneously high seed yield. The paper contains the results of statistical analysis of 37 genotypes (32 DH lines, 2 parental forms, F2 and F3 hybrids and standard cultivar) performed on the basis of experiments carried out at 6 environments. A total of 14 genotypes were found satisfactory (11 stable and 3 unstable) for the chemical industry and 10 genotypes satisfactory (6 stable and 4 unstable) for the biodiesel industry. Among them 5 genotypes had very profitable significant and positive estimates of the main effect for seed yield.