Principles of Plant Breeding (2+1)

Introduction

Mass Selection and Projeny testing

Mass selection
A number of plants are selected based on their phenotype and open pollinated seed from them are bulked together to raise the next generation. The selection cycle is repeated for one or more times to increase the frequency of favourable alleles. Such a selection is known as phenotypic recurrent selection.

Merits:
i) Simple and less time consuming
ii) Highly effective for character that are highly heritable. E.g. Plant height, duration.
iii) It will have high adaptability because the base population is locally adapted one.

Demerits:
1. Selection is based on phenotype only which is influenced by environment
2. The selected plants are pollinated both by superior and inferior pollens present in the population.
3. High intensity of selection may lead to reduction in population there by leading to inbreeding.