Agroport-D

Variety breeding needs a long and consistent work, which is required by the changes in the conditions of tobacco production and the growers’ and processors’ demands. Our breeding aims are determined and updated on the basis of these needs.

 General objectives of breeding

• resistance to potato virus Y (PVY), black root rot and other diseases /cucumber mosaic virus (CMV), tobacco mosaic virus (TMV), tomato spotted wilt virus (TSWV), brown spot etc./
• good yield and yield stability
• different maturity time (early-medium late)
• good quality
• adaptability to different agricultural conditions (irrigated – non irrigated)

Special objectives of breeding

• herbicide resistance breeding against broomrape
• suitability for machinery harvest
• decreasing of nornicotine content

 Keeping in mind the breeding aims, our breeding work – in addition to examination and maintaining of the basic lines – fundamentally can be divided into three main tasks:

• production of genetically new plant population
• selection and stabilization of the produced population in accordance with the breeding aims
• evaluation of the performace of breeding lines (productivity, yield stability, quality)

 The genetic resource of our breeding work is our variety collection, in which there are more than 1000 lines from wild varieties to presently used breeding lines.

Beside breeding it is important to maintain the present varieties under field condition. By this means the effect of climate and the presure of disease populations is always present, which make sure that only those plants are kept in variety maintaining, that can tolerate these conditions.

We have proper infrastructure and professionals for breeding and variety maintaining. We do the selection and systematic experiments, the variety maintaince and other trials in our own research site.

 
We have a very good cooperation with tobacco producer – fermentation companies, who help our work. They organize – with significant financial and professional support – the field trials of promising variety candidates.

We collaborate with many Hungarian and foreign institutes and organizations:

• Plant Protection Institute of Hungarian Academy of Science in issues of plant pathology
• Biology Research Centre of Hungarian Academy of Science in biotechnology
• Agricultural Biotechnology Center in the field of GMO
• AERET in European tobacco research
• CORESTA in PVY research