Читать книгу Principles of Plant Genetics and Breeding - George Acquaah - Страница 77

Hybridization may be used as a means of generating variation for selection in a breeding program. It may also be done to create the end product of a breeding program. The discovery of the phenomenon of heterosis laid the foundation for the hybrid seed technology. Breeders spend resources to design and develop special genotypes to be used as parents in producing hybrid seeds. Hybrid seed is expensive to produce and hence costs more than non‐hybrid seed. In the 1990s, the Genetic use restriction technology (GURT), colloquially, terminator technology, was introduced as a means of deterring the unlawful use of hybrid seed. This technology causes second generation seed from a hybrid crop to be reproductively sterile (i.e. a farmer cannot harvest a crop by saving seed from the current year's crop to plant the next season's crop). Allied techniques that drive the hybrid seed industry include male sterility and self incompatibility, techniques used to manage pollination and fertility in the hybrid breeding industry.