Promising hybrids of Asiatic lilies breeding of All-Russian Horticultural Institute for Breeding, Agrotechnology and Nursery

Abstract

The purpose of the work was to select hybrids of Asian lilies promising for landscaping from the gene pool of the All-Russian Horticultural Institute for Breeding, Agrotechnology and Nursery, to characterize their advantages. Peculiarities of hybridization (the optional isolation of stigmas and castration) are refl ected, as well as grouping of lilies by fl owering time and height of fl ower-bearing shoots, valuable traits for breeding. The main features taken into account in the preparation of combinations of crosses and selecting seedlings in order to obtain hybrids that are diverse in appearance and stable in culture were: fl owering periods – from early to latest, infl orescence shape – from hemispherical to pyramidal, compact infl orescence, anthers sterility, originality forms and colours of fl owers, resistance to botrythiosis and alternariosis, ability to vegetative propagation by traditional methods, including the ability to form bulbills in the leaf axils. Ten promising Asian hybrids have been selected from the Institute’s hybrid lily fund, which are stable in open ground culture, varied in colour (one-colour and two-colour in various tones), fl ower shape (wide open, cup-shaped, chalmoid), fl ower-bearing shoot height (from short to tall), fl owering periods (from early to medium late). Among them ‘Alye Parusa’ and ‘Izyashchnaya’ are originally from Lilium davidii and are characterized by high drought tolerance, tall, elegant fl owers; ‘Ogonek’, 15.17 and 15.22 possess cytoplasmic male sterility; ‘Ogonek’, 15.17 and 15.21 possess early or medium early fl owering; ‘Meduza’, ‘Ogni Biryulevo’, ‘Tsaritsa’ possess an interesting coloring of fl owers; ‘Alye Parusa’, ‘Zagorye’, ‘Izyashchnaya’, 15.22 are tall, suitable for long cuts; in hybrids ‘Zagorye’ and 15.22 large leaf bulbills form in the axils of the leaves, which will contribute to the long-term cultivation of these lilies. All characterized hybrids are valuable material not only for fl ower decoration, but also as parent forms for breeding.

Breeding bulbous and bulbotuberiferous flower crops at the Subtropical Scientific Centre of RAS

“…Many scientific organizations of the Russian Federation are working to create new cultivars [2][3][4][5][6][7]. The objects of research are various flower crops, including bulbous and bulbotuberiferous [8][9] polyploid and interspecific tulip hybrids, sufficiently resistant to gray rot, mottling, suitable for cutting in open and protected ground and for landscape architecture; creation of constant seed races for hybrid freesia; identification of correlative relationships for selecting plants at earlier stages of ontogenesis in order to accelerate the breeding process. Work has been carried out to establish the chromosomal numbers of the studied cultivars and hybrids by luminescent microscopy, the mechanisms of pollen tubes growth in pistils of different genotypes have been revealed in distant and diverse crosses, the possibility of selecting resistant freesia forms according to the parameters of slow chlorophyll fluorescence induction has been established [10].…”