Question

In the area of plant breeding, it is important not only to preserve the seeds of the variety being cultivated, but also to preserve all its wild relatives. Explain with a suitable example.

Answer 1

Plant breeding:
Plant breeding refers to the purposeful manipulation of plant species in order to create new improved varieties that are better suited for cultivation, give better yield and are resistant to pests and pathogens.

Germplasm:
Germplasm refers to the seeds, plants, or plant parts having all possible alleles for all the genes in a given crop.

Importance of germplasm :
Collection of the diverse germplasm ensures that plant breeders have the whole range of possible genetic variabilities of a crop plant. Genetic variability is the root of the plant breeding programme as it enables the plant breeder to choose the right combination of superior characteristics that they would like to develop in an improved crop. Many wild relatives of cultivated varieties of crops are known to harbour disease resistance/drought resistance/ pest resistance genes which are absent in the cultivated varieties. In such cases, artificial hybridisation between a wild relative having the resistance gene and a cultivated high yielding variety, both selected from the collected germplasm, can lead to the production of an improved hybrid variety that bears the desirable characteristics of both the parents.

Example:
The improved yellow mosaic virus resistant variety of Abelmoschus esculentus (lady’s finger), known as Parbhani kranti was developed by conventional breeding between A. esculentus and its wild relative.