Gene Manipulation and Plant Breeding

Abstract

Some 23 specialist papers have been delivered to this Symposium and I have been honoured by the organisers by their invitation to try to summarise, in a sort of ‘wrap-up’ talk, the general trend of opinions as to the place and nature of gene manipulation in plant improvement. I have a difficult task. It is relatively easy to discourse at length about one’s own chosen specialisms and the audience has perhaps cause to be grateful that I was not invited to talk about bananas or potatoes or sugarcane, subjects on which I am virtually unstoppable! Instead, I am charged to talk very generally, even somewhat philosophically, about the subject at large, steering an uneasy, and probably erratic, course between the Scylla of detail and the Charybdis of bland generalisation. In choosing to introduce the subject historically and to go on to consider the sciences to which plant breeding technology appeals, I hope I shall have done no worse than strike either Scylla or Charybdis a mere glancing blow.