Artemisia annua L.: Polyploidy and NIRS, two tools to improve breeding efficiency

Breeding a new cultivar needs 5 to 15 years according to the species and the breeding objectives from bioprospection up to cultivar registration. This is a very long time for companies developing and trading plant based products. To react more quickly to the requirements of the stakeholders, methods to accelerate the breeding procedures have to be taken into account. Among different possibilities, polyploidy induction and rapid methods to measure target traits with near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) were tested on Artemisia annua L.
Tetraploid progenies were compared to the cultivar Apollon. These tests showed no significant differences between the tetraploid plants and the cultivar Apollon for the artemisinin content, as well for the leaf and the artemisin yield.
The determination of artemisinin in powder of Artemisia annua using a hand-held NIRS device showed accurate results in predicting artemininin contents. Root mean square error values of cross-validation and prediction of 0.1 % were calculated, in both cases.