Pustaka Ilmiah Universitas Padjadjaran

Abstrak

Current Status On Molecular Breeding For Quality Protein Maize (qpm) And Resistance To Downy Mildew Pathogen In Indonesia

Demand on high quality of maize for domestic consumption is growing every year due to expanding of food and feed industry using maize as its main components. Since domestic maize production could not meet the demand, Indonesia had to import and it is projected to increase. This condition indeed will bother food self sustain in Indonesia for the future. Improvement high yield culbvar possessing high quality protein is the proper solution to multiply maize production in Indonesia.

A basic problem found to improve and to construct high yielding maize cuitivar possessing both high Iysine and tryptophan and resistant to P. micros is facing the following constraints: (i) poor of gene pool for these traits, (ii) high quality protein of maize possessing high Iysine and tryptophan is controlled by a recessive opaque 2 gene and is difficult to select in heterozygous form, (iii) resistant gene to P. maydays is complex and is controlled by polygene so that it take much effort to be undertaken. Molecular approach is the best solution to facilitate in creating maize cultivar for these important traits.

Set of experiment has been conducting for the last two years with the ultimate goal to construct an inbred line possessing both high quality of protein and resistant against downy mildew pathogen as parental for synthetic or hybrid cultivar. An integrative approach including field experiment for high yield test, screening under artificial inoculation, and molecular technique using Simple Sequence Repeats (SSR) was conducted to select a high polymorphic pair of parent and to test the hybrids. Results showed that this approach coup be effective to improve maize possessing both complex and recessive traits.