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The Art And Science Of Plant Breeding, John Sylvester Gladstones
The Art And Science Of Plant Breeding, John Sylvester Gladstones
Journal of the Department of Agriculture, Western Australia, Series 4
The first part of this article described the evolution of crop varieties and their improvement by simple selection. This part discusses cross-breeding and the other techniques which underly most modern plant breeding programmes.
The purpose cf crossing is to generate new combinations of varietal characteristics. It does not create anything basically new. All the genetic "ingredients" of a new variety must be present in one or other of the parents.
The Art And Science Of Plant Breeding, John Sylvester Gladstones
The Art And Science Of Plant Breeding, John Sylvester Gladstones
Journal of the Department of Agriculture, Western Australia, Series 4
Whether he has known it or not, man has influenced the evolution of plants throughout his whole existence. In the pre-agricultural state he collected fruits and seeds from plants chosen for their useful or desirable qualities, and dispersed them wherever he went. With the neolithic revolution and the development of agriculture, some of these plants were taken into cultivation.
Consciously or unconsciously he selected types with higher yield, which germinated readily when planted, and whose seeds stayed in the head at maturity rather than being shed as in the wild grasses and legumes. Over thousands of years this "guided evolution" …