Breeding and Seed Production of Ornamental Crops

Learning Objective

Lecture 4: Techniques/Methods of crop Improvement

Objective: To teach the students various techniques (like introduction, selection, hybridization, mutation, polyploidy and genetic engineering) used for crop improvement in ornamental crops.
Existing variation in nature is not sufficient enough to meet out the modern trends in global floriculture market, therefore different techniques were used for inducing required variability in the existing germplasm. Like other agricultural crops, in floricultural crops also work on varietal improvement has been carried out and significant achievements have been made in developing new ornamental varieties with superior traits. Systematic genetic improvement of flower crops began in India during sixties at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), New Delhi; National Botanical Research institute (NBRI), Lucknow; Indian institute of Horticultural Research (IIHR) Bangalore and in some agricultural and traditional universities. Several amateurs and professional flower growers have also contributed substantially to evolve new cultivars in some ornamentals.