P. and Hancock, J. (2006). The future of plant breeding. Crop Science 46: 1630–1634.10 Godfray, H.C.J., Beddington, J.R., Crute, I.R. et al. (2010). Food security: the challenge of feeding 9 billion people. Science 327: 812–818.
11 Hancock, J.F. (2006). Introduction to plant breeding and the public sector: who will train plant breeders in the U.S. and around the world? HortScience 41: 28–29.
12 Harlan, J.R. (1976). Plants and animals that nourish man. In: In Food and agriculture, A Scientific American Book. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman and Company.
13 Heisey, P.W., Srinivasan, C.S., and Thirtle, C. 2011. Economic Research Service/USDA Public Sector Plant Breeding in a Privatizing World/AIB‐772
14 Khush, G.S. (2006). Plant breeding training in the international sector. HortScience 41: 48–49.
15 Muller, A., Schader, C., El‐Hage Scialabba, N. et al. (2017). Strategies for feeding the world more sustainably with organic agriculture. Nature Communications 8: 1290.
16 Plant breeding and genetics: The need for agricultural innovation to sustainably feed the world by 2050. CAST Issue Paper, 2017: 57
17 Shin, T. and Makoto, M. (2008). Genetic approaches to crop improvement: responding to environmental and population changes. Nature Reviews Genetics 9: 444–457.
18 Solheim, W.G. II (1972). An earlier agricultural revolution. Scientific American 226 (4): 34–41.
19 Tilman, D., Balzer, C., Hill, J., and Befort, B.L. (2011). Global food demand and the sustainable intensification of agriculture. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 108: 20260–20264.
20 Traxler, G., Acquaye, A. K. A., Frey, K., and Thro, A. M. 2005. Public sector plant breeding resources in the US: Study results for the year 2001.
Internet resources for reference
http://www.csrees.usda.gov/nea/plants/in_focus/ptbreeding_if_study.html.
http://cuke.hort.ncsu.edu/cucurbit/wehner/741/hs741hist.html – History of plant breeding.
Outcomes assessment
Part A
Please answer the following questions true or false:
1 Rice was the first genetically modified food crop.
2 Cereals tend to be low in lysine.
3 Plant breeding is a lengthy process.
4 Plant breeding is needed to support the growing world population.
Part B
Please answer the following questions:
1 Define plant breeding.
2 Give three common objectives of plant breeding.
3 Discuss plant breeding before Mendel's work was discovered.
Part C
Please discuss in the following questions in detail:
1 Plant breeding is an art and a science. Discuss.
2 Discuss the importance of plant breeding to society.
3 Discuss how plant breeding has changed through the ages.
4 Discuss the impact of plant breeding on crop yield.
5 Plant breeding is critical to the survival of modern society. Discuss.
6 Discuss the concept of “breeder's eye.”
7 Discuss the general steps in a plant breeding program.
8 Discuss the qualifications of a plant breeder.
9 Distinguish between public sector and private sector plant breeding.
10 Discuss the molecular and classical plant breeding approaches as complementary approaches in modern plant breeding.
Note
1 1 Professor Eric Yirenkyi Danquah, Dean of International Programmes, University of Ghana (UG);Professor Samuel Kwame Offei, Dean, School of Agriculture, UG, Professor Ronnie Coffman, Director, International Programs, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (IP CALS), Cornell University; Mr. Stefan Einarson, Director, Transnational Learning, IP CALS.
Purpose and expected outcomes
Agriculture is the deliberate planting and harvesting of plants and herding animals. This human invention has and continues to impact society and the environment. The players on this stage advanced the industry with innovation, technology, and knowledge available to them during their era. The tools and methods used by plant breeders have been developed and advanced through the years. There are milestones in plant breeding technology as well as accomplishments by plant breeders over the years. In this chapter, individuals (or groups of people) whose contributions to knowledge, theoretical or practical, impacted what has become known in the modern era as plant breeding will be spotlighted. After studying this chapter, the student should be able to:
1 List and describe the contributions of some of the people through history whose discoveries laid the foundation for modern plant breeding.
2 Describe the contributions of Mendel to modern plant breeding.
3 Discuss the advances in plant breeding technologies.
2.1 Origins of agriculture and plant breeding
In its primitive form, plant breeding started after the invention of agriculture, when people of primitive cultures switched from a lifestyle of hunter‐gatherers to sedentary producers of selected plants and animals. Views of agricultural origins range from the mythological to ecological. The Fertile Crescent in the Middle East is believed to be the cradle of agriculture, where deliberate tilling of the soil, seeding, and harvesting occurred over 10 000 years ago. This lifestyle change did not occur overnight but was a gradual process during which plants were transformed from being independent, wild progenitors, to fully dependent (on humans) and domesticated varieties. Agriculture is generally viewed
