Exploitation of Heterosis

Exploitation of Heterosis

  • Private firms are attracted to the hybrid seed business because of the built-in plant variety protection of hybrids.
  • Customers need to buy new seed for every planting season. But the breeding, production, and sale of hybrid seed the “commercialization of heterosis” can be successful only if it meets the following criteria:
  • The hybrids must satisfy the needs of the customer for all important traits. Simply to be “hybrid”, or simply to exhibit “heterosis”, is not enough.
  • The price of hybrid seed must be low enough to enable the customer to make substantial profits from annually recurring investments in expensive hybrid seed.
  • A rule of thumb is that a first time use of hybrid seed should enable the farmer to earn an extra profit equal to at least three times the added cost of the seed.
  • The price of hybrid seed must be high enough to enable the seed company to make substantial profits from its investments in research, production, and sales.
  • A successful seed company needs to realize a 10-15% return on equity.
  • Its investments in research are one of the essential business expenditures for a research-based seed company should be equivalent to 5-10% of sales income.
Two other criteria which are other requirements for success in the hybrid seed business:
  1. Farmers will risk investment in improved seed only when they have some assurance of a fair price in a dependable market for their crop.
  2. Government regulations, formal and informal, must give minimal hindrance to honest and prudent business operations. These two requirements apply to all seed firms, not just hybrid seed companies. They have particular significance in many developing countries.
To satisfy the three primary criteria for success in the hybrid seed business, companies must integrate a host of variables such as:
  1. The pollinating system of the crop
  2. Options for manipulation of the pollinating system
  3. Supply and cost of labour for emasculation or other requirements for hybridization
  4. The yield of the crop in the farmer’s field
  5. The commercial value of the crop per unit of land area
  6. The seeding rate of the crop
  7. The seed yield in the seed production field
  8. The extra yield to be expected from heterosis
  9. The implications of hybrid uniformity
  10. The most important traits to improve in the crop, and their genetics
  11. The ease of demonstrating improvements in new hybrids
  12. Availability of inbred parents and other breeding materials in either public or private institutions. The following examples illustrate, for three different crop species, some of the many ways in which these twelve variables can be integrated
Single cross
  • Two inbreds are crossed A X B = AB (Hybrid). A hybrid progeny from a cross between two unrelated inbreds
Double cross or double hybrid
  • Two inbreds are crossed, similarly another two are crossed and then their F1 hybrids are crossed e.g.(A X B) X (C X D) = (AB X CD) = ABCD.
Poly cross
  • In case of inbred lines which cannot be crossed easily. Planting is done in such a way to get equal chance to cross with each other.
  • Maintain the lines by vegetative propagation or interse mating of progenies of same generation if vegetative propagation is not possible

Last modified: Monday, 2 April 2012, 10:00 PM