HO/PS 383: Principles of Crop Improvement - Introduction and History of Plant Breeding

Vocabulary flashcards based on Lectures 1 and 2 covering key definitions, historic milestones, figures, and strategies in plant breeding.

Plant breeding

The art and science of improving the heredity of plants for the benefit of humankind.

F1 Hybrid

The first filial generation of offspring produced from distinctly different parental types.

Ragi

Finger millets, which are coarse food grains consumed mainly in the rural and southern parts of India.

Progeny test

A selection procedure introduced in 1856 to evaluate the breeding value of a single plant by the performance of its offspring.

Sport (Off-type plant)

A plant exhibiting abnormal or striking variation in form or color from its parent type due to spontaneous mutations.

Monogerm seedball

A single-flower sugar beet structure that produces one seedling, enabling uniform mechanical planting and eliminating the need for hand thinning.

Gregor Mendel

An Augustinian monk (1822–1884) who established the Laws of Inheritance by cross-pollinating garden pea (Pisum sativum) plants and studying trait ratios across generations.

Norman E. Borlaug

Recipient of the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize who internationalized wheat breeding at CIMMYT in Mexico by developing high-yielding, short-statured wheat cultivars.

T.T. Chang

Rice breeder and head of the Rice Germplasm Center at IRRI who contributed to developing high-yielding semidwarf rice cultivars, increasing tropical Asian rice yields by $42\%$.

Glen W. Burton

Forage crop breeder for the USDA and Georgia Coastal Plains Experiment Station who developed a productive bermudagrass hybrid propagated via vegetative sprigs.

Edgar E. Hartwig

USDA soybean breeder at Stoneville, Mississippi, who spent over 50 years developing high-yielding southern soybean cultivars resistant to diseases, nematodes, and insects.

Donald N. Duvick

Corn breeder for Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Inc. who developed high-yielding hybrid corn cultivars resistant to biotic and abiotic stresses.

Luther Burbank

Plant breeder who selected the 'Russet Burbank' potato from a seedball vine, creating a cultivar that occupies $50\%$ of US potato land.

Steps in a plant breeding program

1. Collection of Variability, 2. Evaluation and Selection of Parents, 3. Cross Hybridization Among Selected Parents, 4. Selection and testing of superior recombinants, 5. Multiplication of Improved seed.

Steps in plant breeding strategy

1. Understand the crop and identify objectives, 2. Search for new genes encoding desired traits, 3. Combine target genes into an improved cultivar, 4. Assess performance in local environments, 5. Distribute superior breeding lines as new cultivars.

Wild rice (Zizania palustris) domestication

The genetic manipulation of wild rice to replace seed-shattering traits with non-shattering traits suited for mechanical harvesting.

Unit of selection (1900)

The principle established around 1900 stating that the entire plant, rather than a single flower, is the correct unit of selection in plant breeding.