Bioprospecting for improved floral fragrance in wild sunflowers

Cultivated sunflower (Helianthus annuus) is not typically considered to have a pleasant floral fragrance. In field production, seed yield is often limited by pollination services, particularly in the production of hybrid seed. Improved floral fragrance, as determined by volatile organic compounds, maybe a route to improving pollinator attraction for oilseed and confectionary production and could also add value to ornamental sunflowers. Wild relatives of H. annuus have a long history of being used to breed improved traits into cultivated varieties, yet it is unknown whether favorable scents are present in wild Helianthus species and thus an available resource for fragrance breeding. To assess the diversity of floral fragrance available in crop wild relatives, 30 diverse accessions of wild Helianthus as well as seven varieties of H. annuus spanning a domestication gradient were grown in greenhouse experiments and variation in floral volatiles was analyzed by solid phase microextraction-ga..., , , # Bioprospecting for Improved Floral Fragrance in Wild Sunflowers

Two supplemental datasets are presented, containing compound abundance (mass normalized peak areas) and compound proportional composition (percentages of total mass normalized peak area), along with supplemental tables and figures.

## Description of the data and file structure

**Dataset S1 (CSV)**: Mean mass normalized peak areas from GCMS data. The first column lists accession scientific name and ploidy level/source if applicable. The second column provides source information also presented in Table S1, referring to either commercial sources, local wild collection, or the USDA National Plant Germplasm System (Plant Introduction number). The subsequent columns list compounds in alphabetical order with their respective mean mass normalized peak areas. Means were calculated excluding zeroes to account for any error in detection.

**Dataset S2 (CSV)**: Proportional composition of fragrance profiles, based on average per...