Principles of Plant Breeding (2+1)

Inbreeding

• Mating between individuals sharing a common parent in their ancestry inbreeding reduces the proportion of the heterozygosity and increase the frequency of homozygosity by the rate of decrease in heterozygosity is equal to ½ N (N- Number of plants in the population) per generation in monocious or hermaphrodite species. In diocious species and monoecious species where self-pollination is prevented the decrease in heterozygosity is lower.
• In small population, even with strict random mating/ strict cross pollination the frequency of homozygotes increases while that of heterozygotes decreases due to inbreeding