Plant Breeding: The conventional Methods!

Plant breeding is the identification and selection of desirable traits of any two good species of plants and concentrating on the ways and techniques to combine them in making a new individual plant. The Mendel’s laws of Genetics have offered the scientific fundamentals of plant inheritance and it is now understood that chromosomes are the primary thing which is responsible for the manipulation and transformation of plant characteristics and traits from one generation to the other.

Broadly speaking, there are three main ways to manipulate the genes of plants and their chromosomal combination.

•    Selection
This is the primary and the most ancient type of selection which has become one of the most effective techniques of the breeding process. Firstly, many selections are made from the genetically original species. The selected and the inbred species of the plants are compared to existing commercial varieties that are there in their yielding performance and other significant factors.

•    Hybridisation
The very commonly used breeding technique is the hybridisation. It helps a great deal in plant promotions too! It can be very easily accomplished by self pollinating plants and then the outcome progeny is used for combination of desired characters. After the generation of the pure line, it is out crossed with another inbred line of plants. By following this procedure, the unfavourable traits or characters are removed by back crossing. Back crossing might be a little more time consuming as compared to the traditional crossing methods, but it has been proven to be quite an effective cure for eliminating the unwanted characters and traits. There are majorly two types of hybrid plants: inter specific and inter generic hybrid plants.

•    Polyploidy
Majority of the plants are diploid. But, there are some plants that are made with three or more pairs of chromosomes and thus they are known as polyploids. This increase in the number of chromosomes per cell can be artificially achieved by injecting the required chemicals that will ultimately result in the doubling of the chromosomal number. Mainly, polyploidy is carried out to increase the size and variability in terms of genes. On the other hand, it must be known that such plants are slow growers and have lower or decreased fertility.

Using these conventional breeder services and techniques has proved to be very much beneficial in the recent times for all the plant species and varieties. Following the above mentioned processes especially for food production is termed as ‘green revolution’. This included the social, economic and nutritional impact of the products.