Abstract
The genetic structure of a population, defined as a community of individuals which share a common gene pool, determines its capacity to be improved or otherwise changed by selection. It will itself have evolved through the action of past selective forces on the genes controlling variability. It follows that an understanding of this process is of fundamental importance in deciding plant breeding options and selection strategies. This is manifestly true for more conventional plant breeding methods involving crossing and selection: it is no less true for the successful integration and expression of genes introduced by the increasingly sophisticated methods offered by the developing technologies described in some of the later chapters.
This chapter is dedicated to the late professors Sir Kenneth Mather and John Jinks who individually and jointly did so much to establish the foundations on which this topic is based.
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Hayward, M.D., Breese, E.L. (1993). Population structure and variability. In: Hayward, M.D., Bosemark, N.O., Romagosa, I., Cerezo, M. (eds) Plant Breeding. Plant Breeding Series. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-1524-7_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-1524-7_3
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