The invention relates to plants wherein the protein OSD1, involved in the transition from meiosis I to meiosis II is inactive. These plants produce Second Division Restitution (SDR) 2n gametes. The invention further relates to plants wherein the inactivation of OSD1 is combined with the inactivation of a gene involved in meiotic recombination in plants, and of a gene involved in the monopolar orientation of the kinetochores during meiosis. These plants produce apomeiotic gametes. These plants are useful in plant breeding.

A method is provided for use in a plant breeding program to generate a population having one or more desired traits. The method includes removing a tissue sample from each of one or more seeds using an automated seed sampler while preserving germination viability of the sampled seeds; analyzing the tissue samples for the presence or absence of a genetic sequence associated with at least one desired trait; based on the analysis of the tissue samples, cultivating plants from the sampled seeds that either possess or lack the genetic sequence associated with the at least one desired trait; creating a parental cross using at least one of the cultivated plants; and selecting seeds from the parental cross and cultivating offspring of the parental cross using the selected seeds.

The present invention relates to a method for producing haploid, dihaploid, polyhaploid and/or doubled haploid plants of the family Cucurbitaceae from isolated microspores, wherein said method comprises a) culturing isolated microspores to obtain embryos competent for plant regeneration, wherein the microspores have been isolated from plant material of a donor plant of the family Cucurbitaceae; and b) regenerating plants from the embryos; wherein step (a) comprises contacting the microspores with one or more inhibitor of histone deacetylase (HDACi) and one or more polyamine. The present invention also relates to a method for producing haploid, dihaploid, polyhaploid and/or doubled haploid embryos, to related kits and compositions, and to plants obtained according to the methods.

Provided are isolated cDNAs comprising a nucleotide sequence having at least 90% identity to SEQ ID NO: 33, SEQ ID NO: 37, SEQ ID NO: 52 or SEQ ID NO: 53. Also provided are expression cassettes; vectors; transgenic plant cells; plants, plant parts, and seeds; isolated polypeptides; amplicons and informative fragments of the presently disclosed nucleic acids; compositions that include amplification primer pairs; methods for producing plants that exhibit HI; methods for identifying the presence or absence of an allele associated with HI in a plant; methods for introgressing Haploid-inducing nucleotide sequences into plants; and methods for selecting parental plants predicted to produce progeny generations with plants that exhibit Haploid Induction trait.

Provided are isolated cDNAs comprising a nucleotide sequence having at least 90% identity to SEQ ID NO: 33, SEQ ID NO: 37, SEQ ID NO: 52 or SEQ ID NO: 53. Also provided are expression cassettes; vectors; transgenic plant cells; plants, plant parts, and seeds; isolated polypeptides; amplicons and informative fragments of the presently disclosed nucleic acids; compositions that include amplification primer pairs; methods for producing plants that exhibit HI; methods for identifying the presence or absence of an allele associated with HI in a plant; methods for introgressing Haploid-inducing nucleotide sequences into plants; and methods for selecting parental plants predicted to produce progeny generations with plants that exhibit Haploid Induction trait.

The present specification discloses a method for detecting an aneuploid of a Brassica oleracea plant, including: performing real-time PCR using DNA extracted from a sample derived from a Brassica oleracea plant to be tested as a template and DNA markers specific to each of two or more chromosomes of Brassica oleracea plant; and detecting chromosomal aneuploidy from a relative difference in amplification amount between the obtained DNA markers. According to one embodiment of the present invention, it is possible to simply, accurately, and rapidly detect an off-type (chromosomal aneuploid) that may occur in Brassica oleracea varieties, in a laboratory equipped with a general molecular biological equipment in the course of seed quality control and breeding research.

The invention relates to a method for producing a chromosome substitution library, comprising: a) producing a population of DH lines from an at least partially heterozygous starting organism; b) identifying a first DH line in the population that has at least one non-recombined chromosome pair; c) identifying a matching second DH line in the population that has at least one non-recombined chromosome pair that is the same as the non-recombined chromosome pair of the first DH line, and at least one non-recombined chromosome pair that is different from the non-recombined chromosome pair of the first DH line; d) selecting the first DH line and the second DH line as a pair of parents, the progeny of which has at least three non-recombined chromosomes, at least two of which form a pair; e) repeating steps b), c) and d) one or more times on the DH population of the heterozygous starting organism, or repeating steps a)-d) on a DH population produced from a progeny plant of a pair of parents selected in step d), until preferably all chromosomes from the selected DH lines are non-recombined and preferably all possible combinations of the parental chromosomes are selected, to assemble a library of chromosome substitution lines. The invention further relates to the libraries thus obtained.

The invention relates to a method for producing a chromosome substitution library, comprising: a) producing a population of DH lines from an at least partially heterozygous starting organism; b) identifying a first DH line in the population that has at least one non-recombined chromosome pair; c) identifying a matching second DH line in the population that has at least one non-recombined chromosome pair that is the same as the non-recombined chromosome pair of the first DH line, and at least one non-recombined chromosome pair that is different from the non-recombined chromosome pair of the first DH line; d) selecting the first DH line and the second DH line as a pair of parents, the progeny of which has at least three non-recombined chromosomes, at least two of which form a pair; e) repeating steps b), c) and d) one or more times on the DH population of the heterozygous starting organism, or repeating steps a)-d) on a DH population produced from a progeny plant of a pair of parents selected in step d), until preferably all chromosomes from the selected DH lines are non-recombined and preferably all possible combinations of the parental chromosomes are selected, to assemble a library of chromosome substitution lines. The invention further relates to the libraries thus obtained.

The present invention relates to non-tränsgenic and transgenic plants, preferably crop plants, comprising a mutation causing an alteration of the amino acid sequence in the CATD domain of the centromere histone H3 (CENH3), preferably within the loop1 or the α2-helix of the CATD domain, which have the biological activity of a haploid inducer. Further, the present invention provides methods of generating the plants of the present invention and haploid and double haploid plants obtainable by crossing the plants of the present invention with wildtype plants as well as methods of facilitating cytoplasm exchange.

The present invention relates to non-tränsgenic and transgenic plants, preferably crop plants, comprising a mutation causing an alteration of the amino acid sequence in the CATD domain of the centromere histone H3 (CENH3), preferably within the loop1 or the α2-helix of the CATD domain, which have the biological activity of a haploid inducer. Further, the present invention provides methods of generating the plants of the present invention and haploid and double haploid plants obtainable by crossing the plants of the present invention with wildtype plants as well as methods of facilitating cytoplasm exchange.