PhD Class presentation on Some facts about plant breeding before the discovery of mendelism

1. SOME FACTS ABOUT
PLANT BREEDING
BEFORE THE DISCOVERY
OF MENDELISM
GP 605: Advanced plant breeding systems
(2+0)
Presented By
Ekatpure Sachin Chandrakant
PhD Research Scholar
Department of Plant Biotechnology

2. Introduction
 In 1965 all over the world the fact was memorize that
MENDEL published the results of his classic genetic
experiments with garden peas
 His interpretation of these experiments immortalized
MENDEL as the founder of exact genetics
 After this memorize and without minimizing in the
least MENDEL's importance and that of his
"rediscovery's",
 Plant breeding before the discovery of MENDEL's
work for even long before 1900 much valuable work
has been done

3. Rough outline of plant
breeding
 Looking for and/or creating idiotypical
variability
 Making combinations in this variability
 Selecting in this variability
 Giving "the right finish" to the selected
material resulting into a variety
 Maintaining and propagating the
material when once a variety is
established

4. THE REMOTE PAST
 When man no longer gathered plants or plant parts then
he started to grow useful plants
 Human selection pressure and natural selection
pressure on populations of plants has been developed
to grow useful plants
 At one moment man started to select most suitable
plants
 Discarding those which looked less suitable for
propagation
 This attempt was made before the start of recorded
history

5. At Roman times
VIRGIL (70-19 B.C.)-
 A permanent selection is required if a
certain cereal variety is not to
deteriorate
 the selected material served as a base
on which a variety was further built up
 The obtained variety will subsequently
have been maintained
COLUMELLA (1st century A.C .)-
 Describes how to select plants from
vines which should be kept for
propagation

6. At Roman times cont…
 As appears from both prehistoric finds
and written records,
ages ago man started
 To pick out favorable phenotypes from
the spontaneously present or developing
variability to use them for propagation
purposes

7. At Roman times cont…
BOCK in 1546:
 The co-existence of a spinach variety with prick less fruits
("round seed") and one with prickly fruits ("sharp seed")
 first half of the seventeenth century tulips were obtained from
spontaneously formed seed
 The flowers showed a wide range of colors
 In Turkey this method of producing new varieties has probably
been applied even earlier
 in the seventeenth century people in France were familiar with
varieties of cabbage lettuce

8. The Eighteenth Century
H. F. ROBERTS
 The knowledge of sex in plants expanded and the first intentional
crosses were made
THOMAS FAIRCHILD
 crossed two species within the genus Dianthus
In the second half of the century the work and school of LINNAEUS came
much to the fore in many a branch of botanical science and binomial
systems of classification of plants has been developed
CAMERARIUS discovered, sex in plants whereas
KOELREUTER was the first to apply CAMERARIUS' finds in scientifically
orientated investigations .

9. KOELREUTER’s findings
 Study of pollen, pollination and fertilization
 Many crosses, mainly made between species, while he noted that only crosses
between related species would generally be successful
 The discovery of the occurrence of sterility in the F1 of specific crosses
 The observation of the similarity between the reciprocal cross and the original
one, at least in most cases
 The ascertainment of the phenomenon that the results of continued self-
fertilization of successive generations of hybrids include types which closely
resemble the parents
 The discovery of the possibility that certain characteristics of one of the parents
are dominant in Fl plants, others being intermediary inherited
 The observation that F1 plants sometimes exceeded the best parents in
growing power.

10. KOELREUTER’s findings
cont…
 KOELREUTER'S work marked the importance
of crossing for plant breeding
 So people were engaged in plant breeding as
early as the second part of the eighteenth
century
 Unfortunately KOELREUTER'S work did not
receive the attention it deserved

11. THE FIRST HALF OF THE 19th
CENTURY
 Great advances in plant breeding marked the first
half of the 19th century
 Thomas Andrew Knight who purposely tried to
obtain better varieties by crossing various cultivated
crops
 He discovered in 1823 that the crosses of Pea
white flower x purple flower yielded a purple Fl
 Patrick Shirreff began to breed wheat and oats in
Scotland
 The first crosses in potatoes were carried out in the
first part of the nineteenth century

12. THE SECOND PART OF THE
19TH CENTURY
 In plant breeding very much progress was made in
the second part of the nineteenth century
 In this period MENDEL published his famous work
 Kl. De Vries who began to cross potatoes by the
end of last century
 Hugo De Vries published the book on "Plant
Breeding" in 1907
 It may serve as a good starting point in the history
of plant breeding

13. Thank You