Читать книгу Principles of Plant Genetics and Breeding - George Acquaah - Страница 105

A population is a group of sexually interbreeding individuals. The capacity to interbreed implies that every gene within the group is accessible to all members through the sexual process. A gene pool is the total number and variety of genes and alleles in a sexually reproducing population that is available for transmission to the next generation. Rather than the inheritance of traits, population genetics is concerned with how the frequencies of alleles in a gene pool change over time. Understanding population structure is important to breeding by either conventional or unconventional methods. It should be pointed out that the use of recombinant DNA technology, as previously indicated, has the potential to allow gene transfer across all biological boundaries to be made. Breeding of cross‐pollinated species tends to focus on improving populations rather than individual plants, as is the case in breeding self‐pollinated species. To understand population structure and its importance to plant breeding, it is important to understand the type of variability present, and its underlying genetic control, in addition to the mode of selection for changing the genetic structure.