The Evaluation And Breeding Selection Of Safflower Germplasm Resources

Safflower(Carthamus tinctorius L.), belongs to the Asteraceae, inside Carthamus plant, is generally used as pharmaceuticals, foodadditives, oil, industrial dyes and can also process feed. Therefore it has high economic value. Flowers in cultivation are drought-tolerant, disease-resistant and easy to grow. The content of linolenic acid in safflower oil is very high, which ranks first in the vegetable oil. Since the Han Dynasty, Chinese have begun to cultivate safflower. It has always been used as medicine material in the traditional Chinese medicine. But in recent years, limited to the ways of harvesting, processing and the promotional awareness of safflower, the acreage of safflower is getting a lot less than before. Now, safflower, which is becoming a typical "underutilized crop", is mostly grown in north Xinjiang, Xinxiang(Henan province) and other regions. Xinxiang, as the domestic traditional growing region of safflower, the cultivation and development of safflower products is still inadequate. This paper selects varieties of Xinxiang and other domestic areas, then plants and manages uniformly, and finally tests the contents of HSYA(Hydroxysafflor yellow A) and mineral elements in it. This paper aims at providing theoretical support for cultivation of safflower, breeding of new varieties and development of deep-processed products in Xinxiang by analyzing the key factors that influence the growth and quality of safflower from the experimental data. The main findings are as follows:1. Combined with the comprehensive evaluation of flower yield, grain yield, the content of HSYA and crude fat, safflower of Hebei, Jiangsu and Nanyang these three kinds of safflower are suitable for being introduced into Xinxiang to plant, with better comprehensive properties. For safflower of Jiangsu, its grain yield per plant(48.25g) ranks second, flower yield per plant(12.21g) ranks first, content of HSYA(23.638mg/g) ranks fourth, content of crude fat is 23.66%. It’s suitable for being cultivated as oil-flower dual-purpose breed. Xinxiang native variety, Wei safflower and Wei safflower(yellow), each trait ranking rather forward, are adapted to continue to be grown, developed, and improved its traits by hybridization with other species. Xinxiang local variety, Wei safflower(white), although does not have outstanding agronomic traits, because of the special color, it should continue to be cultivated and researched for other discoveries.2. Analysis of agronomic traits’ influences on grain yield per plant showed that: hundred-grain weight and primary-branch number have great influence on grain yield per plant. Therefore, hundred-grain weight and primary branch number these two agronomic traits should be concerned in practical production. Analysis of agronomic traits’ relationships with flower yield per plant showed that: the number of secondary-branches and number of mon-effective cones per plant,the weight of hundred grains are major factors. Under the same conditions, types have more secondary-branches, more effective number of mon-effective cones per plant, heavier hundred-grain weight, higher plant and longer branches should be chosen to cultivated.3. Detection of mineral elements and heavy metal elements showed that Fe, Cu, Na, Mn, Mg, Zn, K, Ca 8 kinds of mineral elements were detected while Pb, Cd, As, Hg, Cr 5 kinds of mineral elements were not detected in the tested soil and safflower. The contents of detected elements in the experimental field soil were all higher than that in safflower, and different with both China soil background values and Henan soil background values(Figure 3-7). The contents of toxic metallic elements were lower than the soil environmental quality standards(DB 15618-1995) and farmland environmental quality evaluation standards for edible agricultural products(HJ/T 332-2006).4. The result of safflower close planting test showed that, by changing the traditional method( 3 lines in each plot) to new close planting method(4 lines in each plot), the plant number per mu can be increased from 4410 to 5880, the dry flower yield per mu can be increased by 1788.2g and the grain yield per mu can be increased by 27.5kg. In order to increase production and improve the economy-income level, the new close planting method(4 lines in each plot) is suggested to be used in Weihui, Xinxiang.