Applications of Plant Breeding

Plant breeding has several applications. Let’s understand them one by one-

Plant Breeding for Disease Resistance

The yield of plants can be reduced by a wide range of fungal, bacterial, and viral pathogens, especially in tropical climates. These pathogens cause several diseases, that can be fungal (rusts, e.g., brown rust of wheat, red rot of sugarcane, and late blight of potato); bacteria (black rot of crucifers), and viruses (tobacco mosaic, turnip mosaic, etc.) This can lead to 20-30% of crop loss. This loss can be overcome by plant breeding. To achieve this, the very first step is to know about the causative organism and the mode of transmission.

Plant Breeding for Developing Resistance to Insect Pests

Plants can also be damaged by pests and insects. So, plant breeding through hybridization and selection helps in getting pest and insect-free crop varieties. However, some plants themselves are pest resistant due to their morphological, biochemical, or physiological characteristics. For example- dairy leaves in several plants are associated with resistance to insect pests, e.g, resistance to jassids in cotton and cereal leaf beetle in wheat. Similarly, high aspartic acid, low nitrogen, and sugar content in maize lead to resistance to maize stem borers. Some insect pest resistance varieties are given below:

Plant Breeding for Improved Food Quality

Plant breeding helps in getting improved varieties of crops with higher levels of nutrition. This can be achieved by process biofortification in which crops with higher levels of vitamins and minerals, or higher protein and healthier fats are bred together. The improved crops have better protein content and quality, oil content and quality, vitamin content, and micronutrient and mineral content. For example-maize hybrids made in 2000 had twice the amount of the amino acids, lysine, and tryptophan, compared to existing maize hybrids. Similarly, Atlas 66 (wheat variety) has high protein content.

Plant breeding is made up of two words- plant and breeding. This means there is breeding among two different species of plant of desired varieties.  The desired varieties mean plants should have increased tolerance to environmental stresses (salinity, extreme temperatures, drought, etc.), resistance to pathogens (viruses, fungi, and bacteria), and increased tolerance to insect pests. All these qualities will help in getting better yield and disease-free plants. These all traits altogether, increase the yield of plants and make plant disease free. Plant breeding was first used during the green revolution. Let’s understand the green revolution.