Plant breeding in Brazil: Retrospective of the past 50 years

Abstract

The importance of plant breeding in Brazilian agriculture has grown a lot in the last 50 years. This occurred mainly because of the: increase in graduate programs, which qualified hundreds of professionals; creation of EMBRAPA and other research institutes or state companies, with an emphasis on the production of new cultivars and; promulgation of the cultivar protection law, which stimulates investments in seed production. The retrospective of what happened, enabling the country to move from being an importer of grains, fruits, and fibers to one of the largest exporters of these products worldwide, was the focus of this work. Taking as reference some agricultural products, this article highlights the significant contribution of plant breeding in recent years. Also, some of the enormous challenges that still have to be overcome, in which the participation of Brazilian breeders will be fundamental to continue the progress of agriculture in the coming years.

Eucalyptus breeding programs: a proposal for the use of inbred progênies

“…Researchers then started to look for new alternatives to speed up the obtention of new clones. The option currently employed is the clonal progeny test (Resende, 2002;Ramalho et al, 2021b). In this case, clones are evaluated without the initial progeny test.…”

“…The clones of the different individuals of each progeny are evaluated and, thus, their performance depends on the performance of the progeny that gave rise to it. The assumption is that the clone is better evaluated and that it is not necessary to perform the progeny test before the clonal test (Ramalho et al, 2021b). Thus, progenies and clones are evaluated simultaneously.…”

Viability of the use of inbred progenies in recurrent selection in perennial plants

“…Among them are, for example, the process for reducing the time for the plant to begin flowering, and thus the artificial hybridizations can be performed more rapidly (Assis et al 2005, Castro et al 2021). The cloned progeny tests have been another alternative because they allow the progeny test and the clonal test to be conducted simultaneously (Resende 2002, Ramalho et al 2021. There are also studies aiming at routine use of genomics in the selection process (Resende et al 2017).…”

“…In the case of eucalyptus and other perennials, this approach is more promising for the following reasons: a) selected individuals from the best S 1 progenies will be recombined by crossing the plants in pairs, that is, obtaining FS progenies. Thus, the next selection cycle with FS can begin without need for the step of obtaining progenies because they were obtained during the recombination of S 1 ; and b) in evaluation of the FS progenies, the cloned progeny test (CPT) can be used, that is, the clones are evaluated at the same time as the FS (Resende 2002, Ramalho et al 2021, and c) when the FS progenies are obtained from inbred plants in the case of S 1 , the GS A is greater because instead of the numerator of the equation containing 1/2 of σ 2 A , it will change to 3/4 of σ 2 A . In this situation, two more steps would be added in relation to the number S 1 , that is, the evaluation of the FS and the recombination of the best individuals.…”

Multivariate Bayesian analysis for genetic evaluation and selection of Eucalyptus in multiple environment trials

“…The search for increasing wood productivity is a driving force on tree improvement researches (Jansson et al 2017). In Brazil, the genus Eucalyptus has more than 7.5 million ha planted with its species (IBGE 2019), mainly intended to produce cellulose, wood, and energy (Ramalho et al 2021). The international pulp trade and the intense search for renewable energy sources have increasingly motivated the establishment of eucalyptus plantations in new areas (Fonseca et al 2010).…”