Breeding of Vegetable, Spice and Tuber crops (2+1)

Advantages and Disadvantages

Advantages

• Used for the induction of CMS
• It is a cheap and rapid method of developing new varieties as compared to backcross, pedigree and bulk breeding methods.
• It is more effective for the improvement of oligogenic characters such as disease resistance than polygenic traits
• This is the simple, quick and best way when a new character is to be induced in vegetatively propagated crops

Disadvantages

• Most of the mutations are deleterious and undesirable
• Identification of micro mutations, which are most useful to a plant breeder is usually very difficult
• Since useful mutations are produced at a very low frequency (0.1%),a very large plant population has to be screened to identify and isolate desirable mutants
• It has limited scope for the genetic improvement of quantitative or polygenic characters