Principles of Plant Breeding (2+1)

Disciplines for Plant Breeding

Plant breeding involves several disciplines for development of improved cultivation. Knowledge of all these disciplines is essential for a plant breeder to start judicious breeding programme.

1. Botany: Understanding of the morphology and the reproduction of plants and also taxonomy. It helps to transfer of resistant genes.
2. Genetics and cytogenetics: Plant breeding is an applied branch of Genetics. It involves various genetical principles
3. Agronomy: A good breeder is first a good agronomist to raise good crop and to select and to evaluate varieties
4. Plant physiology: To develop varieties for a biotic stresses eg: drought salinity, heat and crop to develop physiological efficient genotypes
5. Plant pathology: Crop plants are infected by a number of fungal, bacterial, virus diseases. Plant breeder has to develop resistant varieties for various diseases and therefore should be aware of basic principles of plant pathology.
6. Entomology: Crop plants are attacked by large number of insect pests. And therefore plant breeder should be aware of basics of entomology.
7. Biochemistry: Quality tests are required to determine the quality characteristic of a crop varieties.
8. Statistics and Biometrics: Plant breeding has to test the performance of various breeding materials in field experiment. Knowledge of experimental designs and statistical methods are essential.
9. Plant Biotechnology: It is the combination of plant tissue culture and genetic engineering. It is useful tool for development of transgenic crop plants, Herbicide resistance, good quality, resistance to biotic and aboitic stress. Distant crosses possible through somatic hybridization.