Principles of Plant Breeding (2+1)

Introduction

• To get successful results by selection there are two pre-requisites.

  a) Variation must be present in the population.
  b) The variation must be heritable.

History of selection:
Selection was practiced by farmers from ancient times. During 16th century Van Mons in Belgium, Andrew knight in England and Cooper in USA practiced selection in crop plants and released many varieties.
Le coutier, a farmer of island of New Jersey published his results on selection in wheat in the year 1843. He concluded that progenies from single plants were more uniform. During the same period Patrick shireff, a scotsman practiced selection in wheat and oats and developed some valuable varieties. During 1857 Hallet in England practiced single plant selection in wheat, oats and barley and developed several commercial varieties.
Vilmorinproposed individual plant selection based on progeny testing. This method successfully improved the sugar content in sugar beet. His method was called as “VilmorinIsolation Principle”. He emphasized that the real value of a plant can be known only by studying the progeny produced by it. This method was successful in sugar beet but not in other cross pollinated crops. This shows the in-effectiveness of selection in cross pollinated crops. Today progeny test is the basic step in every breeding method.