Production of Disease-Resistant Plants by Unconventional Breeding

Abstract

Classical as well as unconventional plant breeding programmes consist of the production of variability in the plant population followed by the selection of desirable types (Wenzel 1985). Long before man began to influence plant breeding, the evolutionary selection of resistant types took place, resulting in land races, and when Mendelian laws were rediscovered 80 years ago, breeding for resistance continued as a major approach to increasing total yield (Borlaug 1983).