Plant Breeding: Summary

Summary

Economic Botany deals with the relationship between people and economically important plants to fulfill the three basic needs of life such as food, clothing and shelter. Domestication, a term often used for a more intricate process, involves the genetic alteration of plants which did not appear at once, but rather over a substantial period of time, perhaps hundreds of years for some species. In the history of agriculture Vavilov has given the eight main centres of origin of plants were now divided into 12 centres of origin. In Organic agriculture biofertilizers are microbial inoculants which is ecofriendly, more effective even though cost effective than  chemical fertilizers. Rhizobium, Azolla, VAM and sea weeds are used as fertilizers which increase the crop yield many fold.

Plant breeding is a purposeful manipulation of plant species in order to create desirable genotype and phenotype for the benefit of mankind. Plant introduction, selection, hybridization, heterosis, mutation breeding, polyploidy breeding and green revolution are the different methods of conventional breeding.

Seed is an important part of the plant as it gives the food for future generation, so it should be carefully protected and stored. Seed hardening, seed treatment, seed pelleting, seed coating and bio priming of seeds are the modern methods of seed protection. Seeds are stored in bamboo structure, mud or earthen structure in conventional method of storage. In villages, the farmers store the entire seeds in concrete / cement silos or metal or plastic drums. In modern methods of storage we have cryo preservation, gene bank and Svalbard seed bank for long time seed storage.

Glossary

Acclimatization : The adaptation of an individual to a changed climate or the adjustment of a species or a population to a changed environment over a number of generations.

Agronomy : Science of farming

Anthesis : Period of opening of flower.

Certified seed : Seed produced from the foundation or certified seed under the regulation of a legally constituted agency.

Germplasm Collection : The entire collection (of plants / seeds) having all the diverse alleles for all genes in a given crop is called germplasm collection.

Non recurrent parent : The parent of a hybrid that is not again used as a parent in backcrossing

Pure-Line: Progeny of a single self-fertilised homozygous individual.

Quarantine : Strict isolation imposed to prevent the spread of disease

Strain : A group of similar individuals from a common origin.