Methods of Plant Breeding

Contents: Preface. 1. The role of plant breeding. 2. The genetic and cytogenetic basis of plant breeding. 3. Heterosis. 4. Mode of reproduction in relation to breeding methods. 5. Techniques in selfing and crossing. 6. The pure-line method of breeding naturally self-pollinated plants. 7. Hybridization as a method of improving self-fertilized plants. 8. The backcross method of plant breeding. 9. Breeding for disease resistance. 10. Breeding for insect resistance. 11. Special techniques. 12. Inheritance in small grains and flax. 13. Cotton and sorghum breeding. 14. Development of methods of corn breeding. 15. Inheritance in maize. 16. Forage-crop improvement. 17. Breeding other cross-pollinated plants. 18. Seed production. 19. Some commonly used measures of type and variability. 20. Correlation and regression in relation to plant breeding. 21. Chi-square tests. 22. Field-plot technique. 23. Experimental designs and statistical methods for simple plant-breeding experiments. 24. Heritability. Literature citations. Glossary. Appendix. Index.

"Plant breeding is an applied science that is carried out efficiently only through the application of other basic plant sciences. The book deals with the current status of breeding for insect resistance, the breeding of cotton and sorghum as representatives of crop plants often cross-pollinated, breeding studies with other cross-pollinated crop plants including sugar cane, and a review of the present viewpoint of breeding forage crops, including both legumes and grasses.

Experimental designs, field-plot techniques, and statistical methods have been presented with particular attention to the needs of beginning students of plant breeding. A chapter on heritability has been included because of the present-day interest in more precise measures for determining the value of selection for individual characters. These methods of studying heritability differentiate between variability due to genetical and environmental causes.

This is with the belief that each of the various methods of hybridization, including the pedigree method of selecting during the segregating generations, the bulk method with self-pollinated plants, the backcross method and convergent improvement, has certain advantages and disadvantages that make it desirable under some conditions and less desirable for other breeding problems." (jacket)