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Plant breeding is defined as identifying and selecting desirable traits in plants and combining these into one individual plant. Since 1900, Mendel's laws of genetics provided the scientific basis for plant breeding. As all traits of a plant are controlled by genes located on chromosomes, conventional plant breeding can be considered as the manipulation of the combination of chromosomes. In general, there are three main procedures to manipulate plant chromosome combination. First, plants of a given population which show desired traits can be selected and used for further breeding and cultivation, a process called (pure line-) selection. Second, desired traits found in different plant lines can be combined together to obtain plants which exhibit both traits simultaneously, a method termed hybridization. Heterosis, a phenomenon of increased vigor, is obtained by hybridization of inbred lines. Third, polyploidy (increased number of chromosome sets) can contribute to crop improvement

Breeding methodologies

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