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Hybrid Purity Tests: Connecting Parental Lines with the Hybrids

Hybrid seed is a seed produced by cross-pollinating plants in a controlled environment. Hybrids are bred to improve the characteristics of the resulting plants, such as better yield, greater uniformity, improved vigor, color, disease resistance, and so forth. Today, hybrid seed is predominant in agriculture and home gardening, and is one of the main contributing factors to the dramatic rise in agricultural output during the last half of the 20th century.
Hybrid seed cannot be saved for replanting without losing the benefits of the original variety as these traits randomly segregate among the saved seed, not reliably producing true copies of the original variety. New seed must, therefore, be produced for each planting. As genetic purity is a function of seed production, each hybrid seed lot must be tested for parentage and purity. To achieve this, hundreds of seeds from each seed lot are planted and observed for uniformity in field tests. Protein and DNA molecular marker analyses are also widely used for hybrid purity testing. Protein analysis is often preferred because it is less expensive, but DNA tests are becoming increasingly affordable. Similar tests are applied to open-pollinated and synthetic varieties to assure varietal purity.
Necessity of hybrid purity testing:
• To increase crop production
• Documentation for genetic resource.
• To increase crop production at national level.
• To increase farmers income and standard of living.
• To make IPR (plant breeders right and plant variety protection) part strong.
• For distinctiveness, uniformity and stability (DUS) test.
• Quality control of grains for processing.

Aqief Afzal
ASRBC, ACI Seed