Half seed technique

Downey then passed on the low erucic acid characteristic to B. campestris, which accounted for the majority of rapeseed grown in the Prairies. After examination of countless seeds, he finally identified a Polish sample with very low erucic acid with one seed containing zero erucic acid. Using a half seed technique to grow a new plant, five invaluable seeds led to the successful B. campestris breeding program with the release of the first low erucic acid B. campestris variety in 1971. 

Safflower seed oil content can also be determined by the use of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), and today most plant breeders employ NMR techniques to measure their new lines. NMR techniques can be performed on only one half of a seed, so the other half can be planted if the results of the analysis are promising. In its earlier versions, processors tended to feel that NMR analysis produced oil content results that were slightly higher than found by standard solvent extraction analysis or than what was actually obtained at the oil mill. This has been disproven in the case of safflower seed, and the industry has adopted NMR analyses in large part to speed up paperwork. Because of the relatively small amount of safflower seed being measured for oil content annually, no one has taken the time to prove that present-day NMR procedures should be used to substitute for the standard AOCS procedure. 

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