Sunflowers: Re-Pollening the Pollenless

[squishysquashy]

Sunflowers are one of my favorite garden flowers to put near the vegetable garden.  I also kind of got interested in cut flowers recently, too, and I've been doing some research.  Most of the really neat colored sunflowers are pollenless, but I like bees and I also like being able to save seed. 
I got an idea.  Dangerous, I know.

I want a white petal sunflower that isn't male-sterile.  If I use Valentine, a pale flowered pollen-maker, grown next to a few of the pollenless white-flowered suns, would that give me a good mix of maybe-white offspring to choose from, or would that just contaminate all my seed with male-sterility?
To rephrase, would I be breeding sunflower pollination normalcy back into my seeds, or would I be creating a male-sterility catastrophe?

[billw]

Male sterility in sunflowers is cytoplasmic, so there is no way to get a pollen fertile variety by pollinating a male sterile variety, unfortunately. The cytoplasmic genome is always inherited from the female parent.

Some plants have nuclear genes that restore fertility even in the presence of cytoplasmic incompatibilities. I don't know if such a gene exists in Helianthus, but that would probably be your best prospect if you need to breed with CMS varieties.

[walt]

There are several sources of male-sterility in sunflowers.  Genes that restore fertility in one cytoplasm don't always restore fertility in another form of male sterility.  There is, or used to be, a white petaled open-pollinated sunflower on the market.  It had small heads and seeds, and lots of branches.  Basicly, it was a wild sunflower in all but color.  Seems the name was Italian White.  Not sure.
If you pollinated a variety of white pollenless sunflower with pollen from a a commercial oilseed hybrid, you would get seeds.  Would the F1 seedlings have pollen?  Maybe or maybe not.  Depends on whether they were in the same cytoplasm.

[keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.)]

i could be completely off base here, but i was under the impression that like carrots it's possible, just a headache. I had wanted a large red sunflower but the red sunflowers in the catalogs are bred for flower shops and are F1 sterile hybrids i think. So i would need a male pollen donor since they do not produce pollen themselves. But i cant remember if i got seeds or not. I think i did, but maybe i only got like 3 seeds. In any case i lost the seeds and the projects is on hold for now. But i was thinking that the next generation would be half male sterile and half male not-sterile, but if it is maternally inherited then i suppose those would be 100% male sterile as well??

Maybe billw is correct. I say go for it and collect any small amount of seed you can. And keep trying, maybe a mutation will occur and you will get lucky.

I wonder if grafting to a sunflower that is not male sterile could help restore fertility through sharing of sap? idk. just a weird idea.

[troppo]

I used to work in a sunflower breeding program for one of the big ag companies here in Oz. If you are dealing with cms then you need restorer genes to restore fertility. Most commercial grain hybrids are cms-A x R (cms-A = male sterile breeding lines, R = restorer breeding lines). I'm about to adopt a sunflower breeding project looking at developing a dwarf-grain landrace. My plan is to use F1 sterile dwarfs used in flower production and cross them with F1 grain hybrids as they carry the R-gene needed to restore fertility. This population will segregate for sterile and fertile plants, overall I'll be selecting for dwarf, self-fertile plants and then selecting for the seed characteristics I want. As cms is passed down maternally, by culling the sterile plants every generation should eliminate it pretty quickly from the population.

[squishysquashy]

Thanks, guys, that helps, but also goes over my head a little!
walt, I actually have seeds for "Italian White". I planted them last week but they haven't germinated yet. I might try again soon, because I really like the way that one looks in the google pictures.
troppo, do you think that a branching open pollinated white like Italian White would carry the R gene, or does it only happen in the grain hybrids? I'm going to go ahead and give it a try, since I will probably grow a few pollenless types for cutting as well, and I don't have to worry about the pollenless ones crossing with anything unless I save their seeds.

Yeah, a deep red non-sterile sunflower would be cool, too! I just need to find the darkest red pollen producer out there.

[walt]

I doubt Italian White caries the restorer gene.  I was thinking you might cross it with OP grain type to get white petals on a grain type, if you want an OP white petal grain type.
Might check first with local birds to see if humans harvesting sunflowers is allowed in your area.  Squirrels to, for that matter.

[diane]

I have a packet of mixed sunflowers, Flash Blend, from Botanical Interests. It includes Lemon Queen, Autumn Beauty, Velvet Queen and Italian White.

The seeds are not big like the ones from the huge sunflowers I remember from my childhood, and they are brown, black, gray and white. There is
no mention of being pollen free, and they recommend leaving seedbeds standing in the winter as a treat for birds.

I had better hurry and sow them.