Guide Plant Breeding Technician IT/Working with cereals

Warning: This page it's very incomplete, use this article, particular has very caution! Please help finish it this page!

Guide Plant Breeding Technician IT

Company Goals

Outline

Setting up a work space

Working with cereals

Working with beans

Working with Maize

Using plant breeding software

Experimenting

Equipment

CEREALS[]

Seedlist Creation[]

Individual Headrows

Observation Rows

Yield Trial Plots

Germplasm Plots

The Cereals are the first crop to be planted each year. In the local area they were usually planted in the last week of April or the first week of May. Prior to planting, the seed packets of heads collected in the previous year are brought out of the seed storage room and a seedlist is created from an Inventory list that the breeder has marked regarding what is to be planted. Sometimes only the seed of the first and second single heads collected from previous year's headrows were designated to be put on the seedlist and planted. You may also want to reserve a dozen plots for planting material to be crossed. Some of the plots for material to be crossed might be left empty and planted later than everything else. There may also be a few new germplasm accessions.

Headrows[]

There are two possible formats for the Headrow Inventory. In one format (NOTEBOOK), there is an inventory of the number of heads collected from each plot and a weight in grams of a bulk collected from each headrow plot.

Notebook Inventory — Triticale Notebook format Inventory

Also, see the Notebook data at the top of the page for plot 74 in

TRITENV — Notebook data and labeled storage envelopes and bulk of seed

In the second format (LABEL), the seed of each single head collected from a particular plot is assigned a unique pedigree and there will be several rows of labels with the same plot# and year but with different pedigrees.(see Label Format Inventory for Single Heads below)

For Headrow Bulk (Label Format) Inventory see "Label Format Inventory for Headrow Bulk seed" below and the labels on the envelopes in

This is the format of the inventory used to print out the labels for each envelope of seed. Labels were usually not created for the single heads, so making a seed pedigree inventory was not necessary but its existence made the spring work easier. If the LABEL inventory didn’t exist one had to make it for the seedlist next spring or eventually for the next year's notebook. This is explained later in the notes for creating the CEREAL INVENTORY.

If the Inventory is for labels, creating the seedlist involves only moving the previous year’s Plot number (Plot#) column to the right of the Pedigree column and renaming it as the XXXX (year) SOURCE column, deleting any spreadsheet rows/records that are not going to be planted and adding the new Plot numbers down the left side under a the heading of PLOT#.

The Headrow seedlist usually had only 3 columns: PLOT# or HEADROW#, PEDIGREE and SOURCE (See Appendix E). The SOURCE column contained the plot # of the seed for the SOURCE YEAR. If the new year was 1995, then it was understood that the SOURCE year was 1994. On the computer and even on the Seedlist there might be several more SOURCE columns with the year as the column header and the word Source on a line above. Usually, however, only the previous year’s seed was planted. If there are 2 or more SOURCE YEAR columns to the right of the PEDIGREE column, the most recent column is usually all you need to print but if seed is needed from an earlier year, you might need to print 2 or more of the columns. If you need to use seed from two or more years previous, consider changing the number of columns printed only for the few needed pages rather than printing out 2 or more SOURCE YEAR columns for every row. You can do this by hiding the columns not needed by reducing their column width to zero. When you need to print the information in that column, increase the column width to what is needed, adjust other column widths to accommodate the new column and print out the page(s) with the extra column.

The existence of the seedlist usually just made making the Notebook easier. The Headrow Seedlist for Triticale was usually followed by a few empty spreadsheet rows and then the Barley Headrow Seedlist. Be prepared for changing the seedlist order regarding Triticale and Barley. If the Seedlist was created with Triticale first followed by Barley, and in the field it's decided to change to Barley followed by Triticale or to add material to the second crop type, the Headrow#'s will have to be altered to reflect the change. One way around this is to assign separate blocks of numbers separated by 500 or 1000 to the Cereals. E.g. Triticale Headrows 1-1000. Barley Headrows 2001-2999. It's moslty just an inconvenience that is easily corrected back at the office so that the Notebook is correct. The usual number of Barley and Triticale headrows planted was around 600 each.

All print-outs are to be printed on one side of a page only. This is to make it simple to find information when pages are lying on a desk.

The headrow seedlist was printed out on 8.5 in. x 11 in. paper in a portrait format. It should be very easy to read. Make letters a bit larger than normal with extra spacing between lines. Make sure letters are dark, but BOLD is not really necessary. Notebook style lines are not necessary but there should be good spacing between each line of data. A ruler or a blank piece of paper can be used to keep one looking properly straight across the page. Perforated or dotted lines might help in keeping one’s eyes going across the page from Source column to Pedigree column and new Plot# column. Usually,the cereals were planted using the Inventory envelopes rather than making up new envelopes. The new Plot‘s were just written on the old envelopes and the old plot numbers were stroked out to indicate they were not to be used.Seed stayed in the old envelope.

Observation Rows[]

There were only a dozen or so Observation rows of Barley and Triticale planted each year. The breeder will select what to grow from the Inventory list of headrow bulks.The weight of seed available for each bulk should be listed so that the breeder can make decisions regarding how long the rows will be and if there is enough seed available for planting. Usually the Observation row seedlist was tacked onto the end of the Triticale and Barley Headrow Seedlist. The only difference from the headrows was that the amounts were larger and the pedigree ended with “-BLK” for BULK. The observation rows were planted from bulks of Headrow plots collected in the previous year. An observation row was used to increase the amount of seed of a variety for Yield Trials and was between 30 feet and 100 feet long.

The Observation rows are grown from the bulks of the previous year’s headrows. So the first thing needed is the previous year’s inventory of the headrow bulks (See Appendix D). Be prepared to sort the inventory by amounts. The Breeder may want an idea of the available amounts for deciding how long the observation rows will be. You may even be asked to pull all of the bulk seed out of the seedroom. The bulk seed was usually in small red or orange mesh bags in small cardboard trays. Each bag had two tags in it with the year the seed was harvested, plot# and pedigree.The Breeder or yourself will mark the inventory indicating what is to be grown and what is not to be grown. The Breeder may also indicate a preferred order of planting for the observation rows.

The format and construction of the Observation Row Seedlist is the same as for the headrows.

Copy the Inventory.
Rename the copied file as a SEEDLIST.
Create a header stating that the list is the XXXX (year) (croptype) OBSERVATION ROW SEEDLIST.
Insert a new column to the right of the PEDIGREE column.
Move the PLOT# data to the right of the pedigree information and label the new column as a SOURCE column for a particular year.
Put all of the inventory records in the proper order as decided by the Breeder and then
Add the plot numbers to the left hand side.(In Excel, use the Fill Handle and the autofill feature)

Yield Trials and Germplasm Blocks[]

The bulks to be planted for the Yield Trials and the Germplasm blocks were taken from the seed room and used to create a seedlist from the previous year's inventory.It’s possible that some bulks of headrow families of the same family as the Germplasm will be added to a germplasm block.

The breeder needs to know the amount of seed available for each variety. She may even want them sorted by amount so that a decision can be made regarding a weight cutoff for what will be planted based on the planned size for Yield Trial plots. Some material may be sent out to other companies or researchers for testing. Keep track of these varieties and where they are sent. Mark the envelopes or bags of seed from which seed is being sent abroad so that the original envelopes of seed and their contents are not thrown out if housecleaning of the seedroom is done.