Principles of Plant Breeding (2+1)

Genetic assortative mating

• Mating between individuals that are more closely related by ancestry than in random mating. It is also known as inbreeding. So it has following effects on a population.

  I. It increase homozygosity and reduces heterozygosity
II. The characters are fixed, fixation is little effected by heritability.
III. Total genetic variability of the population increases rapidly and genetic variability within inbreeding group i.e. families or lines decreases rapidly and is ultimately zero.
IV. Prepotency of individuals increases. It is the property of an individual to produce progeny which are similar to each other and to the parent. Homozygosity is most important which is under the control of breeder as homozygosity increases the prepotency of an individual increases.E. g: Useful for development of inbreds.