List some examples of specific goals of a plant breeding program and describe the four steps of a plant breeding program

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Before initiating a breeding program, specific goals and objectives must be established. These goals depend on the crop and the potential use of the plant product produced. Some example objectives include yield, quality traits, harvestability, and persistence. Grain and forage yield are general goals of many breeding programs. Yield is a complex quantitative trait that has been improved by selection for disease and insect resistance, competitiveness, and drought tolerance. Examples of quality traits include increased leafiness, improved malting characteristic, improved bread-making characteristics, total oil content and oil characteristics, and increased fiber quality and color. Lodging resistance, uniformity of maturity, shatter resistance, and dry down rate of grain are examples of harvestability traits.
Once the goal of a breeding program has been chosen, a plant breeding strategy needs to be determined. Specific strategies will depend on method of reproduction (i.e., sexual or asexual) and pollination (i.e., self- or cross-pollinated), and on the actual species. The basic steps in most breeding program include: (1) collection of genetic materials, (2) selection of plants for the breeding program, (3) hybridization (i.e., crossing) of plants and reselection of superior prrogeny, and (4) evaluation of the new materials.