Introducing the Pale Yellow Gene into Increased Chlorophyll Burley

In order to speed the development of an air-cured tobacco type with consistently low TSNA and traditional burley quality traits, a tool is needed to rapidly identify plants with desired characteristics. Using conventional methods plants often must be grown to maturity before they exhibit the trait of interest. This limits the number generations that can be tested and adds to the time required to develop a usable variety. This intent of this proposal is to develop a method that utilizes genetic markers to speed the selection of specific traits. Ultimately this tool could help tobacco breeders to develop air-cured tobacco types that could be grown by burley growers to have traditional burley quality, but lower TSNA than current burley types.