who are plant breeders what do they do and why
Plant breeding Plant breeding is the art and science of changing the traits of plants in order to produce desired characteristics.[1] It has been used to improve the quality of nutrition in products for humans and animals.[2] . Plant breeding can be accomplished through many different techniques ranging from simply selecting plants with desirable characteristics for propagation, to methods that make use of knowledge of genetics and chromosomes, to more complex molecular techniques (see cultigen and cultivar). Genes in a plant are what determine what type of qualitative or quantitative traits it will have.The main purpose plant breeders is have is so they can create a specific outcome of plants and potentially new plant varieties.[2]
Plant reproduction Reproduction in which male and female gametes do not fuse, as they do in sexual reproduction. Asexual reproduction may occur through budding, fragmentation, fission, spore formation and vegetative propagation. Plants have two main types of asexual reproduction in which new plants are produced that are genetically identical clones of the parent individual. Vegetative reproduction involves a vegetative piece of the original plant (budding, tillering, etc.) and is distinguished from apomixis, which is a replacement for sexual reproduction, and in some cases involves seeds. Apomixis occurs in many plant species and also in some non-plant organisms. For apomixis and similar processes in non-plant organisms, see parthenogenesis.