Author(s)

Teshale Assefa¹, Jixiang Wu¹, Kenneth A. Albrecht², Paul J. Johnson¹, Arvid Boe^1*

¹Plant Science Department, South Dakota State University, Brookings, SD, USA.
²Department of Agronomy, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA.

Cup plant (Silphium perfoliatum L.) has demonstrated potential for bioenergy production in North America, South America, and Europe. Our objectives were to: 1) determine genetic variation and narrow-sense heritability for biomass and related morphological traits, and 2) identify half-sib families with superior biomass yield and potential for use in cultivar development in cup plant. Thirty three half-sib families and a check were evaluated at two locations in 2011, 2012, and 2013. Annual biomass yield at Brookings ranged from 2183 kg·ha^-1 in 2012 to 8053 kg·ha^-1 in 2013; whereas, yields at Arlington were similar among years. Mean individual half-sib family biomass yield ranged from 3912 to 6784 kg·ha^-1 at Brookings and from 5682 to 11,269 kg·ha^-1 at Arlington. Heritability estimates for five biomass-related morphological traits ranged from 0.52 to 0.72. This cup plant population had potential for biomass production in the north central USA and contained sufficient additive genetic variation to expect progress from among-and-within-family selection for biomass yield and related traits.

Cup Plant, Half-Sib Families, Heritability

Assefa, T. , Wu, J. , Albrecht, K. , Johnson, P. and Boe, A. (2015) Genetic Variation for Biomass and Related Morphological Traits in Cup Plant (Silphium perfoliatum L.). American Journal of Plant Sciences, 6, 1098-1108. doi: 10.4236/ajps.2015.68114.