Breeding of Vegetable, Spice and Tuber Crops

Mutational Heterosis

• It is simplest type of heterosis.Lethal (mostly), recessive, adaptively unfavourable mutants are either eliminated or sheltered by their non-lethal, dominant and adaptively superior alleles in cross pollinated crops.This is termed as mutational heterosis.
  
• Naturally occurring mutants are generally of recessive and less adaptive to environmental conditions, hence risk of their elimination by natural selection process is higher.
• Its mutational heterosis which gives them to chance to be in population by sheltering them