Reciprocal Recurrent Selection in the Breeding of \u3cem\u3eBrachiaria decumbens\u3c/em\u3e

Pastures of Brachiaria decumbens cv. Basilisk radically changed the scenario of livestock production in central Brazil in the early 1970s and in fact, promoted the development of this vast region. However, despite the reasonable biomass yields and nutritional value when grown on these tropical acid soils, its susceptibility to grassland spittlebugs has limited its use. The breeding of B. decumbens in Brazil has been restricted to interspecific crosses using cv. Basilisk as a pollen donor due to the lack of compatible sexual ecotypes within this species. Recently, the successful chromosome duplication of a sexually reproducing diploid accession produced 3 successful events (Simioni and Valle 2009), enabling intraspecific crosses. This paper reports the onset of the research to obtain superior apomictic hybrids in B. decumbens using reciprocal recurrent selection (RRS), a cyclic breeding strategy