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#selection methods

3 public questions tagged with this topic.

Plant Breeding 3

A disadvantage of mass selection is:

Retaining many parental plants without progeny testing yields genetically heterogeneous population where individual plants differ in maturity, height, and quality, reducing market acceptability and certification standards. Seed lot lacks uniformity required for mechanized harvesting, DUS testing, and uniform product quality demanded by modern industry. Phenotypic selection confounds environment with genotype, so inferior heterozygous plants with favorable micro-environment may be selected, limiting genetic advance, especially for low heritability traits like yield where h² below 0.2. Without c

Ref: Allard RW. Chapter 8 – Limitations of mass selection. Poehlman 1995: uniformity issues

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Plant Breeding 3

A major advantage of mass selection is:

Because mass selection avoids intensive inbreeding and retains many selected parents bulked together, resulting population preserves substantial genetic diversity and heterozygosity buffer. Broad base of alleles confers buffering against diverse environmental stresses, disease races, and climatic fluctuations, granting stable performance across years and locations. Unlike pure lines that may fail in off-type environments, mass-selected varieties contain mixture of genotypes complementary in stress tolerance, maintaining yield stability due to population buffering mechanism described by Allard.

Ref: Harlan JR. Crops and Man – landrace adaptation; Ceccarelli S. Participatory breeding for wide adaptation

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Plant Breeding 3

Mass selection is based primarily on:

Mass selection operates directly on visible phenotypic values of individual plants in a population. Breeder walks field, visually scores traits such as plant height, earliness, seed color, or disease-free appearance, and harvests seeds from best looking individuals to constitute next generation bulk. Underlying genotype is not tested through progeny rows, molecular markers, or combining ability assays. Success depends on high heritability where phenotype mirrors additive genetic value, correlation between observable character and breeding value, and low environmental noise. It is simplest bree

Ref: Gardner CO. Mass selection genetics; Acquaah Chapter 10 – Phenotypic selection basis

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