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Twentieth-Century Developments
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- In the twentieth century plant breeding developed a scientific basis, and crop improvement was understood to be brought about by achieving favourable accumulations and combinations of genes. Taking advantage of known genetic diversity could facilitate this, and appropriate combinations were achieved through recombinations brought about by the sexual process (hybridization). Furthermore, it was possible to move useful genes by special breeding strategies. Thus a gene discovered in a wild plant could be transferred to a suitable adapted type by a technique known as the backcross method
- A sexual hybrid was made, followed by a series of backcrosses to the desirable (recurrent) parent, while selecting for the new gene in each generation. After about five or six back-crosses, the offspring resembled the recurrent parent but contained the selected gene.
- In the early twentieth century, it was demonstrated that the extra vigour long associated with wide crosses (called hybrid vigour or heterosis), particularly in naturally cross-pollinated crops, could be exploited in plant breeding. For maize, a new system of hybrid breeding was developed, using a combination of inbreeding and outbreeding.
- Inbreeding was accomplished by crossing the plant with itself. This led to a decline in vigour as the step was repeated over several generations. Outbreeding was achieved by intercrossing the inbred lines to restore vigour. The hybrid between inbreds derived from divergent inbreds (called a single cross or F1hybrid) was uniform (homogeneous), and some were superior to the original populations before inbreeding. During the process of inbreeding, the inbreds became weak, but vigour was restored when these inbreds were crossed to produce the F1. To increase seed set from weak inbreds, two hybrids were crossed; this was known as the double cross method.
- Hybrid breeding technique in a sense is similar to arranging a Rubic's cube, where contradictory steps need to be taken to achieve the appropriate reformulation. In hybrid breeding, the first step produces a series of weak inbreds, followed by a series of specific combination, to produce a series of new hybrids. Hybrid maize breeding led to enormous increases in productivity, which were soon exploited in a wide variety of seed-propagated crops, including naturally self-pollinated ones, such as tomato and rice.
- A number of genetic techniques were developed and refined in twentieth-century breeding, such as improved techniques to search for and store increased genetic variability, different techniques to develop variable populations for selection, and improved methods of testing to separate genetic from environmental effects. The exact details of the process for crops necessarily differed among naturally cross-pollinated plants (such as maize) and naturally self-pollinated plants (such as soybean or tomato) as well as those plants in which vegetative propagation (usually cross-pollinated) permitted the fixing of improved types directly.
- Conventional plant breeding can be defined as systems for selection of superior genotypes from genetically variable populations derived from sexual recombination. The system is powerful because it is evolutionary; progress can be cumulative, with improved individuals continually serving as parents for subsequent cycles of breeding. Genetic improvement by conventional breeding has made substantial changes when the efforts have been long-term.
- Characters improved include productivity, quality, and resistance to diseases, insects, and stress. There are, however, limits to the progress of conventional breeding. These are due to limitations of the sexual system, because it is usually not possible to incorporate genes from nonrelated species or to incorporate small changes without disturbing the particular combination of genes that make a particular type unique. Thus a useful gene in cabbage cannot be transferred to wheat.
- Limitations of conventional breeding are particularly apparent when a needed character (such as disease or insect resistance) is unavailable in populations that can be incorporated by sexual crosses. Mutations may be induced, but they are often deleterious or connected with undesirable effects.
- With conventional breeding, it is also not possible to improve a unique genotype, such as "Bartlett" pear, by adding a single character, since the recombination that results from hybridization makes it impossible to recon-figure this cultivar exactly. Finally, conventional breeding has technical or economic limitations to detect infrequent or rare recombinants, the lack of sufficient time to generate cycles of recombination, space to grow necessary populations to recover superior recombinants, or resources to be able to select, identify, evaluate, and fix desired recombinants.
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