Practical Manual on Fundamentals of Plant Breeding

Plant breeding is the purposeful manipulation of plant species in order to create desired genotypes and phenotypes by improving the genetic makeup of crop plants in relation to their economic use. This manipulation involves either controlled pollination, genetic engineering, or both, followed by artificial selection of progeny. In its primitive form, plant breeding started after the invention of agriculture during which plants were transformed from being independent, wild progenitors, to fully dependent (on humans) and domesticated varieties. During this period, humans also discovered the time-honored and most basic plant breeding technique selection, the art of discriminating among biological variation in a population to identify and pick desirable variants. Selection implies the existence of variability. The selection was based solely on the intuition, skill, and judgment of the operator. Needless to say, this form of selection is practiced to date by farmers, where they save seed from the best-looking plants or the most desirable fruit for planting the next season.…