Explain the main steps in plant breeding?

• Plant breeding is the genetic improvement to create desired plants types.
• It helps in the production of disease resistant, better yield crops.
  
• The steps include:-

1) Collection of germplasm:-

• The entire collection of plants or seeds having all the diverse alleles of genes is called germplasm collection.

2) Evaluation and selection of plants:-

• Germplasm is evaluated to identify plants with a desirable combination of characters.

3) Cross- hybridisation among selected parents:-

• Hybridisation is crossing of 2 or more types of plants to bring better traits together in the progeny.
• It includes the following steps -

a) selection of parents, b) selfing, c) emasculation, d) bagging, e) tagging, f) artificial pollination.

4) Testing, release and commercialisation of new cultivars:-

• Eg- Wheat varieties - Kalyan Sona, Sonalika.

Rice varieties - Jaya, Ratna.