Principles of Plant Breeding (2+1)

Procedure of developing hybrid variety

• The breeder has clear cut objective in developing the variety. He has to select the variety accordingly.

  1. Choice of parents: One of the parent involved in crosses should be a well adapted and proven variety in the area. The other variety should be having the character that are absent in this variety.Combining ability of the parents serves as useful guides in the selection of parents, which produce superior F1 and F2.

  2. Evaluation of parents: Parents are evaluated for their combining ability.

  3. Emasculation: The removal of stamens/anther without affecting the female reproductive organs, hand emasculation is mostly followed.

  4. Bagging: Immediately after emasculation the flowers are enclosed in suitable bags to prevent cross pollination.

  5. Tagging: The emasculated flowers are tiedwith a thread. The information on date of emasculation, date of pollination, name of female and male parents are recorded in the tag with pencil. The name of the female parent is written first then male parent.

  6. Pollination: Mature fertile and viable pollen from the male parent should be placed on receptive stigma of emasculated flowers to bring about fertilization. Pollen grain is collected, allowed for dehiscence and pollination is carried out with camel hair brush.

  7. Harvesting and storing of F1 seeds: The crossed heads/pods should be harvested and threshed. The seeds should be dried and properly stored to protect them from storage pests.

  8. Rising the F1 generation: Identify the selfed seeds in the F1generation by using dominant marker gene. Larger F1 population is desirable, because both the genes are present in heterozygous condition.

  9. Selfing: To avoid cross pollination andto ensureself pollination. In often cross pollinated crops they are bagged to prevent cross pollination.