Enhancement of Food Production — BIOLOGY STD 12 Science — Question
Maharashtra BoardEnglish MediumSTD 12 ScienceBIOLOGYEnhancement of Food Production5 Marks
Question
Describe briefly various steps of plant breeding methods.
✓
Answer
The main steps of the plant breeding program (Hybridization) are as follows:(1) Collection of variability:
Germplasm collection is the entire collection of all the diverse alleles for all genes in a given crop.
Wild species and relatives of the cultivated species having desired traits are collected and preserved.
Forests and natural reserves are the means of in situ conservation of germplasm.
Botanical gardens, seed banks, etc. are means of ex situ conservation of germplasm.
(2) Evaluation and selection of parents:
The collected germplasm is evaluated to identify healthy and vigorous plants with desirable and complementary characters.
Selected parents are selfed for three to four generations to increase homozygosity.
Only pure lines are selected, multiplied and used in the hybridization.
(3) Hybridization:
The variety showing maximum desirable features is selected as female (recurrent) parent and the other variety which lacks good characters found in recurrent parent is selected as male parent (donor).
The pollen grains from anthers of male parent are artificially dusted over stigmas of emasculated flowers of female parent.
Hybrid seeds are collected and sown to grow $F_1$ geneartion.
(4) Selection and Testing of Superior Recombinants:
The $F_1$ hybrid plants which are superior to both the parents and having high hybrid vigour, are selected and selfed for few generations to make them homozygous for the said desirable characters.
This ensures that there is no further segregation of the characters.
(5) Testing, release and commercialization of new cultivars:
The newly selected lines are evaluated for the productivity and desirable features like disease resistance, pest resistance, quality, etc.
They are initially grown under controlled conditions of water, fertilizers, etc. and their performance is recorded.
The selected lines are then grown for at least three generations in natural field, in different agroclimatic zones.
Finally variety is released as new variety for use by the farmers.
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