Breeding and Seed Production of Ornamental Crops

History of Breeding

History:

• The history of breeding dates back to as early as 700 B.C., when Babylonians and Assyrians hand – pollinated date palms.Sex in plants was discovered by Camararious in the year In 1694.
• The first artificial hybrid was, however, produced in an annual flower crop. The hybrid ‘Fairchild Mule’ was prepared by crossing sweet william with carnation (Dianthus barbatus x Dianthus caryophyllus) by Thomos Fairchild in 1717.
• Thereafter, several workers carried out the work on crop improvement. Sir John Gregor Mendel proposed for the first time the laws of inheritance. With the advent of time many new hybrids were developed in different floricultural crops including petunia, pansy, aster, gerbera, statice, cyclamen, marigold etc in different parts of the world.
• Sir Joseph Bank introduced 7000 new ornamental plants species were introduced to England from China and India in the year 1789 which included Rose (Chinese) and Chrysanthemum.
• Initially private nurserymen or amateur breeders took the work of crop improvement and developed several varieties in ornamentals. Later on crop specific research was taken over by several ICAR institutes and SAU’s throughout the country.
• In India, seed production was started on limited scale in Srinagar and plains of North India. Initial work on hybrid seed production in ornamentals was started by M/S Indo American Hybrid Seeds (India) Pvt. Ltd., Bangalore. The company started producing F₁ hybrid seeds of Petunia for 100% export during mid sixties.
• Production of seeds of open pollinated flower crops was started by M/S Beauscape Farms, Sangrur, Punjab who started flower seed production involving farmers on large scale. Now many companies have started producing seed on large scale for export to Holland, UK, USA, France, Germany, and Japan etc.
• The main areas of flower seed production in India are Punjab (Sangrur, Patiala, and Ludhiana), Haryana (Panipat, Sirsa), Karnataka (Bangalore, Rani Banur), West Bengal (Kalimpong), Himachal Pradesh (Kullu valley) and J&K. (Srinagar valley).