Characterization of High Oleic Gene Pool and Validation of the Identified Genomic Regions Controlling Oleic Acid Content in Sunflower (Helianthus annus L.)

The increase of oleic acid content has become one of the major goals of plant breeders to improve sunflower oil quality, as high content of oleic acid increases the oil’s stability to oxidative degradation at high temperatures and as well has been suggested to reduce cholesterol in blood plasma thereby reduces the risk of coronary heart disease. In this study 120 inbred lines of high oleic gene pool were characterized for yield, its attributing traits, oleic content and then validated with two known microsatellite molecular markers linked to oleic acid content. High phenotypic and genotypic coefficients of variation as well high heritability and high genetic advance as percent of mean was recorded for oleic acid content. This indicated the presence of the additive type of gene action controlling the trait. Further, the two molecular markers under the study exhibited differentiating bands between all the high and low oleic inbred lines. Hence the validated markers from this study, linked to the high oleic acid trait could be further used in marker-assisted selection and would greatly contribute to develop stable high oleic acid breeding lines.