Plant Breeding: Concepts and Methods
A Learning Module
Robert Koebner and Theresa Fulton
This learning module is intended as a self-tutorial or a refresher, or to provide teaching materials to be used in a course. It is geared towards scientists or upper-level students with a good background in biology and an understanding of basic genetics.
It is designed to be complementary to other GCP learning modules, which cover molecular markers, genetic diversity, phenotyping, and marker-assisted breeding.
The module is presented in 10 sections:
- Introduction and historical development of plant breeding
- Principles of inheritance
- Genotypic variation
- Other forms of heritable variation
- Quantitative variation and heritability
- Novel sources of genetic variation
- The practice of plant breeding
- Breeding methods (self-pollinators, cross-pollinators, polyploids, etc.)
- Plant Breeders' rights
- New technologies for plant breeding
In addition, a glossary of terms commonly encountered in plant breeding is included.
Special thanks to members of the Cornell University Plant Breeding department and Dr. R. Summers (RAGT Seeds, Cambridge, UK) who reviewed the material and gave helpful suggestions.