Published in Scientific Papers. Series B, Horticulture, Volume LX
Written by Akife DALDA ŞEKERCİ, Osman GÜLŞEN
Dahlias are popular ornamental plants cultivated in many countries. It is an important garden plant owing to its diversity in colours, size, shapes, forms and profusion of flowering. Dahlia,member of the Asteraceae family. This review describes and compares the conventional and molecular genetics methods being used for breeding. Dahlia is vegetatively propagated with tubers commonly. Breeding programmes have focussed on improving various characteristics to enhance ornamental values, including flower colour, size and form, and production quality. Although desirable traits have been introduced by classical breeding, there are limitations to this technique. Firstly, distant crosses may be limited by incompatibility or differences in ploidy level that is very common in dahlias. Secondly, characteristics such as uniform growth and synchronous flowering are polygenic. Thirdly, several viruses are known to infect dahlia. The dahlia breeding and its methods are described and discussed in this review. Alternative breeding methods will provide faster procedures. In the past, classical breeding approaches like introduction, hybridization, composite crossing, multiline, and backcross breeding were utilized for this purpose. However, each of these methods has advantages and disadvantages. Recent developments in plant biotechnology such as directed mutation, genomics and recombinant DNA technology were adapted by breeders to develop more improved cultivars of dahlias.
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