Safflower Research & Development at Nimbkar Agricultural Research Institute (NARI)

Vrijendra Singh, N. Nimbkar and A. K. Rajvanshi

Abstract

Safflower improvement program at NARI has been in progress since 1968.  The safflower work at NARI has been devoted to developing suitable technologies and varieties and hybrids for limited irrigation situations.   A complete technology for growing safflower under limited irrigation has been developed at the Institute.  The work carried out on varietal development has resulted in the state level release of a high yielding safflower variety ‘Nira’ for limited irrigations during 1987-88.  Recently NARI-6, a non-spiny variety has been released on the national level.  This is a moderately high oil containing variety possessing about 35% oil in the seed.

 In the hybrid development program, ten spiny and three non-spiny genetic male sterile lines have been developed from two different genetic male sterility sources identified at NARI.  In addition, six dwarf male sterile lines possessing a sterility marker have also been developed.  The male sterility marker makes it possible to identify male sterile (MS) and fertile (MF) plants at about 40-45 days after sowing, making roguing of MF plants relatively easy during hybrid seed production.  A spiny safflower hybrid developed at NARI was found to give an average increase of 19% in seed yield and 32% in oil yield over the national check A-1 over three years.  Four non-spiny safflower hybrids developed at NARI were found to give significantly higher seed, oil and petal yield than the non-spiny check JSI-7 in multilocation coordinated trials during 1999-2000.  A complete technology of hybrid seed production of both spiny and non-spiny hybrids has been developed at NARI.

 NARI is trying to popularize herbal health tea prepared from safflower flowers.  A battery-operated knapsack type flower collector developed at NARI for this purpose is 2-3 times more efficient than the flower picking carried out by hand in spiny safflower.

Key words:  Hybrid, genetic male sterility, variety