Heartland Plant Innovations’ Crop Breeding Services

Heartland Plant Innovations (HPI) Crop Breeding consists of traditional breeding, single seed descent, and wide crossing (using ancient species and wild relatives) to assist breeders in the advancement of early generation and elite lines. Our highly skilled staff can serve as an extension of any crop breeding program to expand its capabilities and resources.

Wide Crossing Expertise

HPI has developed expertise in successfully generating viable seed from crosses between hexaploid wheat and ancient species and wild relatives. The use of wild relatives enhances the ability to identify specific agronomic and end-use traits. Using our doubled haploid (DH) production system, these traits can be introgressed into breeder selected backgrounds in a shortest possible time.

Our crop breeding services are performed and billed on a completed line basis, so the customer pays when we deliver seeds.

Molecular Breeding

The process of developing new crop varieties can take 10-12 years, but varietal development time can be reduced using doubled haploid technology and molecular breeding techniques. Marker-assisted breeding/selection is a technique that can be used in plants to select traits that are desirable for breeders, farmers, and consumers. This approach dramatically reduces the time required to identify and select lines/varieties which express the desired trait in a breeding program. Heartland Plant Innovations Inc. is working with public and private breeding programs to deploy marker-assisted selection to design efficient schemes for crossing, backcrossing, selfing and gene pyramiding/stacking. We also provide genotyping service using SSR, SNP, STS, and KASP markers.

Ploidy Manipulation

Ploidy manipulation is a valuable breeding tool for genetic and crop improvement of many species. Ploidy induction can offer many opportunities, such as the development of seedless cultivars, improvement of ornamental characteristics, tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses, and restoration of fertility in wide hybrids. Using anti-mitotic chromosome doubling agents like colchicine, variants generated through ploidy manipulation possess useful characteristics and provide a wider germplasm base for breeding programs. In wheat, HPI has successfully developed amphiploids and synthetic wheat for the introgression of genetic material into modern wheat varieties from its progenitor species. HPI offers ploidy manipulation services to small and large breeding programs to develop desirable recombinants/progenies and enhance genetic diversity.

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