Plant breeding is the hobby of creating/developing new plants. It is as exciting as it sounds, but it involves a long and often tedious process, that can be paved with many disappointments. Gardeners can learn how to avoid these, fortunately.
Employ professionals
If you feel like you don't really know what you're doing, relax and opt for a horticulturist's services. These are professional plant breeders who are dedicated to finding the right conditions for a plant to thrive in and can ensure the uniformity of the new variety. Also, they can take your plants to a nursery for further development, so that you know it won't fail and you won't have to start it all over.
Study the different techniques
There are many plant improvement and breeding techniques described online as well as in specialty books. You can try these on many species as long as you understand how plant reproduction works. You have to be imaginative and daring in your crossing experiments. This is how you get to produce new strains of plants.
Artificial selection
Nature surely does its job, but you should also perform a careful selection of plants yourself. One good example is gardeners who pick seeds only from the plants that grew best. You have to choose those which exhibit the traits you desire to perpetuate.
The test of time
It takes patience to develop a new strain. You can only call yourself a successful breeder once you have come up with plants that can display the new features consistently, generation after generation. These have to be resistant to the environment they are living in and go through all the development stages unhindered.
Apply for a patent/license
Once it becomes obvious that you have a uniform and stable variety on your hands, you can start marketing it. For this to happen, you must have it recognised as a new variety on its own and have it patented. Horticulture experts usually offer plant licensing services as well and teach you the plant marketing UK strategies that work.
Thus, the safest way to success for new plant breeders is to keep in touch with a horticulture expert, to make sure they are not wasting their time.
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