Department of Industrial Crops

There are two oil crops in the interest of this department, the sunflower and the linseed. The main object of sunflower breeding program is to develop new lines and hybrids to the EU and East European markets. The linseed breeding develops new varieties mainly for England and the domestic market.

Sunflower breeding

The sunflower breeding started several decades ago, and it is currently carried out with the following purposes: increasing the yield potential, improving the disease resistance and the tolerance to abiotic stresses (e.g. drought), increasing the oil content, and breeding for specific traits as herbicide resistance and high oleic sunflower.

  • Our breeding work focuses on the following issues:
  • breeding of conventional and high-oleic hybrids;
  • testing general combining ability of the females and males in test crosses;
  • Testing the lines and hybrids from phytopathological aspects and for their grain composition;
  • testing the hybrids in performance trials;
  • supporting the breeding work with the techniques of the modern molecular genetics, like marker assisted selection and estimation of genetic distance.

Besides breeding work, our research workers are engaged in researches related to production technology, biology of anthesis, nutrition value, phytopathology, drought tolerance and molecular genetics.