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.…”

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).…”