Question

Crop improvement can be done by conventional plant breeding or by genetic engineering. Can you describe the two methods?

Answer 1

Crop improvement refers to the genetic alteration of plants to satisfy human needs.

It can be done by both conventional breeding and by genetic engineering

Conventional breeding: it is defined as identifying and selecting desirable traits in plants and combining these into one individual plant. 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. After cross breeding or pure line selection the desire germ line used as new variety. This is time consuming, laborious methods and the maintenance of pure line is very difficult because the contamination of other trait by pollen in subsequent progeny is very high.

Genetic engineering:- in this method the desirable gene is isolated from donor and transfer it into targeted plant with help of vector plasmid , by various methods like particle bombardment or agrobacterium mediated etc. after insertion of gene in plant it starts its expression and give desired phenotype or result. This is very fast, less laborious method and there is very less chances of other trait contamination and maintenance of pure line is easy .