Breeding Considerations and Strategies

Summary

Plant breeding for water limited environments is rarely performed as a separate program. In most cases it is part of a mainstream breeding program which is designed to release a cultivar appropriate to a designated ideotype and customer demand. The ideotype includes various specifications regarding morphological, developmental, phenotypic, biotic and marketing requirements. Drought resistance and abiotic stress resistance is part of the ideotype.

There is no consensus approach and design to the inclusion of drought resistance in a breeding program and the procedure is very specific to each case. The content of this book is designed to help the breeder in developing the specific procedure fitting his requirements. It is however emphasized that any novel procedure, test, or selection method should be pretested and critically evaluated by the breeder in his own working environment before its adoption as part of the program.

Regarding the flow of the program there might be two main approaches, namely phenotyping and selection for drought resistance during early generations or during late generations. The two options are discussed, favoring in general the case for late generation selection for drought resistance, with exceptions. A schematic example is presented for a simple pedigree breeding program integrating some components of selection for drought resistance.

Finally, the utilization of heterosis and hybrids towards water-limited environments is briefly discussed.