Breeding for Climate Resilience in Castor: Current Status, Challenges, and Opportunities

Castor oil (Ricinus communis): a review on the chemical composition and physicochemical properties

“…Castor plant, belonging to the spurge family Euphorbiaceae can grow in different geographical areas (Anjani, 2014). Growth of castor is favorable around 20 °C to 25 °C whereas temperatures lower than 12 °C or higher than 38 °C affects germination and yield (Severino et al, 2012;Yin et al, 2019). The plant growth and appearance vary greatly including its growth pattern, seed color and size, stem color and foliage, as well as oil content Figure 1 (Ramanjaneyulu et al, 2013;Sbihi et al, 2018).…”

Genetic analysis of diverse castor (Ricinus communis L.) genotypes based on seed related morphometric traits

“…Development of high yielding early cultivars is a challenge as early flowering and maturity are generally associated with lower productivity (Anjani, 2010). In regions with short growing seasons or in tropical areas, early maturity is a valuable trait that suits well for multiple cropping systems (Yin et al, 2019). Duration for reproductive growth should not be reduced to ensure proper seed filling and hence, vegetative growth must be condensed while concentrating on earliness breeding.…”

“…Duration for reproductive growth should not be reduced to ensure proper seed filling and hence, vegetative growth must be condensed while concentrating on earliness breeding. The major obstacle in breeding early/medium maturing genotypes is the presence of a negative correlation between maturity duration and seed yield (Yin et al, 2019). Although the flowering time of castor can be influenced by temperature and other cultivation factors like water, nutrients, etc., it is mainly determined by a genetic factor (Yin et al, 2019).…”

“…The major obstacle in breeding early/medium maturing genotypes is the presence of a negative correlation between maturity duration and seed yield (Yin et al, 2019). Although the flowering time of castor can be influenced by temperature and other cultivation factors like water, nutrients, etc., it is mainly determined by a genetic factor (Yin et al, 2019). The experimental material consisted of germplasm accessions, inbreds and monoecious lines which were all developed with a common genetic background of Indian origin.…”

“…Harvesting is done at multiple pickings up to four (Anjani, 2010) which ultimately increases the cost of labor. For conventional castor production, manual labor has become scarce and expensive and early/medium flowering varieties/genotypes can address this issue to some extent by minimizing the pickings which will be the added advantage of breeding early/medium maturing cultivars (Yin et al,2019).…”