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

Applications of Mass Selection

Applications of Mass Selection

• To maintain purity of existing variety simply by roguing of unwanted ones.
• In breeding of crops like forage crops, which are less considered from economic point of view.
• To preserve identity of established cultivar.

Mass selection in cross pollinated crops

• It is the simplest, easiest and oldest method of selection, where individual plants are selected based on their phenotypic performance, and bulk seed is used to produce the next generation by mixing it.
• Mass selection proved to be quite effective in maize improvement at the initial stages but its efficacy especially for improvement of yield, soon came under severe criticism that culminated in the refinement of the method of mass selection.
• The selection after pollination does not provide any control over the pollen parent as result of which effective selection is limited only to female parents.
• The heritability estimates are reduced by half, since only parents are used to harvest seed whereas the pollen source is not known after the cross pollination has taken place.