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Role of Mutation in Plant Breeding
Role of Mutation in Plant Breeding
Mutation Breeding
Soon after Mullers discovery of the mutagenic action of X-rays,
Herman Nilsson-Ehle of the Swedish Seed Association at Svalof and one
of his students, Ake Gustafsson, began experiments in mutation breeding
that have been continued to the present. It was soon established that
Stadlers results with barley and maize had general validity with diploid
species. Chlorophyll, mutation arose in greater number in two-rowed
barley following X-ray dosages to seeds. When the dosage approached
the lethal point, mutation rates increased to about thousand times the
spontaneous rate.
Some of the mutant types in barley, particularly the erectoides
mutants, seemed to have useful agricultural properties. When the more
promising of these mutants were tested in field trials (Gustafsson and
Tedin, 1954; Froier, 1954), they generally produced yield about the same
as the mother variety, but a few appeared to be significantly superior.
2.
improvement.
Do mutations with phenotypically constructive expressions
occur often enough to make the search for them profitable and
their incorporation into commercially acceptable varieties
competitive with other methods of breeding? If not, can the
mutation process be brought under experimental control so as
increase the proportion of constructive changes? The key to
these problems appear to lie in understanding of mutation
process itself.
Special
Merits
and
Disadvantage
of
Mutation
Breeding
Mutation breeding seems to be especially useful in changing single
simply inherited characteristics in highly developed genic systems.
When dealing with highly developed variety, the breeder is reluctant to
use standard hybridization method because they may disrupt a superior
combination of genes. This situation is often encountered when some
outstanding variety succumbs to a new race of a disease or is inferior in
some specific morphological or physiological attribute. Whether
mutation breeding or the standard backcross technique should use
depend on the two factors:
1. The ease with which the desired improvement can be induced, and
2. The number of deleterious mutants that accompany he specific
mutation for which the breeding program is undertaken.
The point is sometimes made that undesirable alterations in order
characters are easily handled in mutation-breeding programs because the
mutant lines are so similar to the parent variety that a few backcrosses
will restore the desire background genotype. However, marker genes
brought in by a genetically dissimilar parent often allow very effective
selection toward the genotype of
backcross programs and more rapid return to the type of the recurrent
parent than otherwise would be possible. It is therefore doubtful whether
the number of backcrosses required to guarantee recovery of the
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Date : ..............................
Vaisali Singh
M.Sc. IV Sem. (Botany)
Udai Pratap Autonomous Collage
Varanasi
1.
Introduction
2.
Characteristions of mutation
3.
Types of mutation
4.
Mutagens
5.
6.
Use of mutation
7.
8.
Conclusion
9.
Reference