A conic bundle is a contraction $X\to Z$ between normal varieties of relative dimension $1$ such that $-K_X$ is relatively ample. We prove a conjecture of Shokurov that predicts that if $X\to Z$ is a conic bundle such that X has canonical singularities and Z is $\mathbb {Q}$ -Gorenstein, then Z is always $\frac {1}{2}$ -lc, and the multiplicities of the fibres over codimension $1$ points are bounded from above by $2$ . Both values $\frac {1}{2}$ and $2$ are sharp. This is achieved by solving a more general conjecture of Shokurov on singularities of bases of lc-trivial fibrations of relative dimension $1$ with canonical singularities.

We show that a standard conic bundle over a minimal rational surface is rational and its Jacobian splits as the direct sum of Jacobians of curves if and only if its derived category admits a semiorthogonal decomposition by exceptional objects and the derived categories of those curves. Moreover, such a decomposition gives the splitting of the intermediate Jacobian also when the surface is not minimal.

We make precise the structure of the first two reduction morphisms associated with codimension two non-singular subvarieties of non-singular quadrics Qn, n ≥ 5. We give a coarse classification of the same class of subvarieties when they are assumed not to be of log-general-type.