Crop Breeding and Applied Biotechnology (Jan 2011)
Evolution of plant breeding
Abstract
Plant breeding is considered one of the longest ongoing activities undertaken by humans, who select plantsmore productive and useful to themselves and the animals for at least 10,000 years ago. The evolution of civilizationsparalleled the success of plant breeding, although this has not been recognized by the public. The reason may be lack ofunderstanding of what plant breeding encompasses. The concept of plant breeding evolved, depending on the time it wasformulated, but without losing the essence of being art and science of manipulating plants for man. This review discusses theevolution of the concepts and the methods of plant breeding, here divided arbitrarily into selection based on phenotypes,breeding values and genotypes. No matter how big the pool of genetic information in recent years, the phenotype will continuesto be important in the present and future.
