Principles of Plant Breeding (2+1)

Random mating

• Each female gamete is equally likely to mate with any male gamete and the rate of reproduction of each genotype is equal i.e. there is no selection.
• In such a situation.

  I. Gene frequencies remain constant
  II. Variance for the character remain constant
  III. The correlation between relatives or prepotency does not change.
• In plant breeding some form of selection is practiced on such a mating system is known as random mating with selection. Such selection changes the mean of the characters, increases the frequency of alleles for which selection is practiced. Increase the variability when selection is alone for rare allele and reduce when predominant allele. It is more observed when character is controlled by one or two gene with moderate heritability.
• Useful for progeny testing production and maintainance of synthetic and composite varieties and production of poly cross progenies.