Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Using this book
- Nomenclature and terminology
- Abbreviations and glossary
- Introduction
- Part I The science of plant breeding
- 1 Origins of plant breeding
- 2 Creating new genetic variation
- 3 Modern high-tech breeding
- Part II The societal context of plant breeding
- Part III Turmoil and transition: the legacy of the 1980s
- Part IV The agbiotech paradigm
- Part V Increasing global crop production: the new challenges
- Part VI Plant breeding in the twenty-first century
- Notes
- References
- Index
3 - Modern high-tech breeding
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Using this book
- Nomenclature and terminology
- Abbreviations and glossary
- Introduction
- Part I The science of plant breeding
- 1 Origins of plant breeding
- 2 Creating new genetic variation
- 3 Modern high-tech breeding
- Part II The societal context of plant breeding
- Part III Turmoil and transition: the legacy of the 1980s
- Part IV The agbiotech paradigm
- Part V Increasing global crop production: the new challenges
- Part VI Plant breeding in the twenty-first century
- Notes
- References
- Index
Summary
What a joy life is when you have made a close working partnership with Nature, helping her to produce for the benefit of mankind new … fruits in form, size, color, and flavor never before seen on this globe; and grains of enormously increased productiveness, whose fat kernels are filled with more and better nourishment, a veritable store-house of perfect food – new food for all the world's untold millions for all time to come.
Luther Burbank (1925) Lecture in San FranciscoIntroduction
The ability of the plant breeder to create new genetic variation was enormously increased in the mid twentieth century by the invention of tissue culture and the use of growth regulators. Attempts at wide crossing, as discussed in the previous chapter, were often frustrated by the incompatibility of genomes from relatively distant species. Embryo rescue could sometimes help, but one of the most crucial advances came with the development of chemically induced chromosome doubling, which has been the key to the success of many crop breeding programmes. As well as making possible much wider genetic crosses, chromosome doubling has enabled the use of powerful methods such as somatic hybridisation and haploid breeding, which have been especially useful in developing countries. In the past few decades, the technique of mass propagation has also been of considerable benefit in breeding programmes for tree crops, most of which are too long lived to be accessible to the sorts of approaches developed for the much shorter lived annual crops.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Plant Breeding and BiotechnologySocietal Context and the Future of Agriculture, pp. 38 - 56Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007