UNDERSTANDING GENETIC COMBINATIONS IN
Plant
Breeding
by Grubbycup
Many home gardeners will partake in some form of classical breeding as a hobby or to develop plants that are well suited to their own needs . Grubbycup breaks down the various plantbreeding methods .
Natural Selection
Imagine a hypothetical stand of plants growing naturally . The environment will put genetic pressure on the plants . If a plant doesn ’ t survive the growing conditions long enough to reproduce , then it is selected against . The plants that do survive long enough to reproduce are selected for . Plants that do better and have more successful offspring will out-propagate the others . Over generations , as the successful plants outcompete the less successful plants , the colony will adapt to the environment or naturalize .
Early Plant Breeding
What is most successful in an area is not necessarily the most desirable to humans . For example , if our hypothetical plant has flowers , then it may be that a plant with red flowers is more desirable to humans than a plant that has white flowers , even if the plant with white flowers is better suited for reproductive success ( maybe the pollinators like the white flowers better ). Simple forms of plant breeding would involve human intervention , and could involve either removing plants with white flowers , or saving seed from the plants with red flowers . This creates a situation where the plants with red flowers are selected for , and those with white flowers are selected against . Eventually , with enough generations , all ( or at least most ) of the plants will start producing offspring with red flowers . One benefit to this type of breeding is it ’ s relatively simple to just keep saving seed from the plants closest to a particular ideal , and the plant line will tend to approach that ideal .
44 Maximum Yield