Question

Explain the steps in the process of plant breeding.

Answer 1

Plant breeding is the branch if biology, which is concerned with the developing varieties superior to existing ones.

Steps include in plant breeding are:

1) Collection of variability - Wild varieties species having desired traits is collected. The entire collection having all the diverse alleles for all genes in a given crop is called germplasm collection.

2) Evaluation and selection of parents- The germplasm collected is evaluated to identify the plants with desirable characters.

3) Hybridization - Pollen brains from the desirable plant chosen as male parents have to be collected and placed on the stigma of the flowers selected as a female parent. Also, it is not necessary that the hybrids do combine the desirable characters, usually only one in a few hundred to a thousand crosses shows the desirable combination.

4) Selection of superior recombinants - Plants are selected having desired character combination. The plant must be superior to both the parents.

5) Testing, release, and commercialisation of new cultivars - The selected plants are evaluated by growing the plant in an experimental field and the performance is recorded. This is done for at least three growing seasons at several locations in the country.