Introduction

Welcome to Plant Breeding Methods, a textbook designed to equip you with the skills needed to successfully manage a cultivar development program. Throughout this textbook, you will study the strategies used by plant breeders to develop clonal, pure-line, hybrid, and synthetic cultivars. By the end, you will have a solid understanding of the different breeding methods and the ability to design your own breeding program for any of the cultivar types.

This textbook covers nine essential topics that are crucial to the development of cultivars. These topics include: (1) Types of cultivars and modes of plant reproduction, (2) Sources of parental germplasm, (3) Population formation by hybridization, (4) Techniques for artificial hybridization, (5) Mutation breeding, (6) Molecular markers and genetic engineering, (7) Backcrossing, (8) Inbreeding, and (9) Recurrent selection. These topics will serve as the foundation for a detailed study of the development of clonal, pure-line, hybrid, and synthetic cultivars in Principles of Cultivar Development.