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Melhoramento do cafeeiro: V - Melhoramento por hibridação

Artificial hybridization in coffee breeding offers possibilities that are still unexplored. Inter-varietal hybridization has been used in Coffea arabica in order to get information about the genetic constitution of the varieties, and occurrence of heterosis, to breed without changing the morphological characters of the varieties and also to synthesize new genetic types of economic value. Inter-specific hybridization has been employed for improvement of cup quality and to furnish data about the relationship of various coffee species and the behaviour of known genetic factors of one species in the genetic background of other coffee species. About 2500 inter-varietal and inter-specific artificial hybridization have been made in Campinas during the last 20 years. The economic value of some of these hybrids has been stressed in this paper and special attention has been called to the inter-specific hybrids involving the tetraploid C. arabica and other known diploid species as C. canephora, C. Dewevrei and C. congensis. After chromosome doubling of these triploid hybrids, the resulting allopolyploids may be of economic value.


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