This study presents a groundbreaking field breeding strategy for Lantana camara, a plant celebrated for its ornamental value yet criticized for its invasive tendencies. Traditional hand pollination techniques for lantana are labor-intensive, as each flower produces only one seed, making the generation of significant populations time-consuming. Although open pollination represents an alternative for seed production, the reliability of generating sterile triploids through interploidy crosses has been questionable. Addressing these challenges, this research innovatively employs open-pollinated breeding between diploid and tetraploid populations to efficiently produce sterile triploid cultivars. The method leverages male-sterile tetraploids for open pollination with female-sterile, male-fertile diploids, yielding 544 triploid seeds within five weeks and proving the effectiveness of interploidy hybridization. Moreover, diploid populations in an all-by-all cross setup produced over 2,000 seeds in the same period, eliminating the need for hand pollinations. Nonetheless, the development of tetraploid breeding lines encountered obstacles due to insufficient pollen transfer, likely resulting from low pollen production, although selfing within hybrid lines remained feasible in an open-pollinated field setting. These findings significantly advance the fields of ornamental breeding and invasive species management, providing fresh perspectives on the cultivation and control of Lantana camara. Demonstrating the capability to rapidly produce large volumes of sterile triploid lines with minimal labor, this study lays the groundwork for the broader availability of non-invasive Lantana camara alternatives in the future.
