The effects of two different harvest stages (full flowering and full podding) on forage yield and quality of ten forage rape (Brassica napus L. var. oleifera) and three turnip (Brassica rapa L. var. rapa) cultivars were evaluated under rainfed conditions in a Mediterranean type climate at Bursa, Turkey, during the 2002/2003 and 2003/2004 growing seasons. Plant height, branches per plant, leaf l...

The US industry uses :18 million kg of high erucic acid oil annually, mostly from imports. Therefore, a large overall market potential exists for development of annually renewable domestic sources of erucic acid. The present research was conducted to characterize the winter hardy rapeseed germplasm for oil, erucic acid, and glucosinolate contents for use in breeding programs to develop commerci...

The paleohexaploid crop Brassica rapa harbors an enormous reservoir of morphological variation, encompassing leafy vegetables, vegetable and fodder turnips (Brassica rapa, ssp. campestris), and oil crops, with different crops having very different leaf morphologies. In the triplicated B. rapa genome, many genes have multiple paralogs that may be regulated differentially and contribute to phenot...

Experiments were conducted to evaluate the nutritional value of meal derived from low glucosinolate cultivars of mustard (Brassica juncea) in comparison to samples of canola meal (Brassica napus, Brassica rapa). Samples of Brassica seed (four B. juncea, one B. napus, and one B. rapa) were processed using laboratory procedures to produce oil-extracted meals, which were examined for composition (...

The Brassica genus comprises many economically important worldwide cultivated crops. The well-established model of the Brassica genus, U's triangle, consists of three basic diploid plant species (Brassica rapa, Brassica oleracea, and Brassica nigra) and three amphidiploid species (Brassica napus, Brassica juncea, and Brassica carinata) that arose through interspecific hybridizations. Despite be...

We constructed a high-density Brassica rapa integrated linkage map by combining a reference genetic map of 78 doubled haploid lines derived from Chiifu-401-42 × Kenshin (CKDH) and a new map of 190 F2 lines derived from Chiifu-401-42 × rapid cycling B. rapa (CRF2). The integrated map contains 1017 markers and covers 1262.0 cM of the B. rapa genome, with an average interlocus distance of 1.24 cM....

The movement of transgenes from crops to weeds and the resulting consequences are concerns of modern agriculture. The possible generation of "superweeds" from the escape of fitness-enhancing transgenes into wild populations is a risk that is often discussed, but rarely studied. Oilseed rape, Brassica napus (L.), is a crop with sexually compatible weedy relatives, such as birdseed rape (Brassica...

Research on natural and bioactive compounds is increasingly focused on their effects on human health, but there are unexpectedly few studies evaluating the relationship between climate and natural antioxidants. The aim of this study was analyze the biological role of six different Brassica vegetables (Brassica oleracea L. and Brassica rapa L.) as a natural source of antioxidant compounds. The a...

The mapping and functional analysis of quantitative traits in Brassica rapa can be greatly improved with the availability of physically positioned, gene-based genetic markers and accurate genome annotation. In this study, deep transcriptome RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) of Brassica rapa was undertaken with two objectives: SNP detection and improved transcriptome annotation. We performed SNP detectio...