Study And Utilization Of Herbicide Resistance In Foxtail Millet (Setaria Italica L. Beauv)

Foxtail millet (Setaria italica (L) Beauv) is a traditional crop for food and fodderworldwide, especially in China. Unfortunately, manual weed control is a major problemlimiting foxtail millet production and development of the crop. Herbicides cannot beapplied because of a lack of selectivity. Breeding foxtail millet to improve herbicideresistance and overcoming this problem is desirable for modernizing agriculture. Toaccout this problem, we had already transfered three kinds of herbicide resistances fromwild plants, Setaria viridis, to cultivated foxtail millet during the period of my preparingthesis in France. The three kinds of hebicide resistant germplasm, sethoxydim, trifuralineand atrazine resiistance, are availlable. On the basis of this work, we continue work onthe utilization of these resistances, and furtherly to understand the inheritance, resistantability, fitness of resistances, gene flow of resistance, and to search for efficiant andsafety ways of using herbicide resistance ect.. The result shown that the Sethoxydimresistance is controlled by one nuclear dominant gene. This gene appears to provide veryhigh resistance, nearly 700 times that of a normal variety, and there is no differencebetween the resistant parent and F1 progeny in resistance at farrner doses. Trifuralineresistance may be controlled by two linked recessive genes. Dose response experimentsshowed these genes increased by 8 times the resistance. Atrazine resistance is amaternally inherited trait Resistant liness have been obtained by cross between cv malesterile line as female and D94-23 as pollen donor. Resistant lines having 200 times higherresistance have being achieved throught crosses and back-crosses using the mostimportant Chinese varieties. In practise, We have bred out 6 herbicide resistant lines withgood agronomy performance which are resistant to sethoxydim, trifuraline and atrazine,respectively. These herbicide resisitent lines are releasing in proper production. At thesame time, we used sethoxydim resistant gene to overcome seed contamination in two-line hybrid seed production by using the herbicide resistant strain as a restorer; usedtrifuraline resistant gene to overcome pollen contamination producing unwanted hybridseed in seed production areas.to keep purity of male sterile line of millet; and usedatrazine resistant gene to improve the seed yield and quality in hybrid seed production.