engleski

Maize breeding and biotechnology

Plant breeding is the art and the science of improving the heredity of plants for the benefit of humankind. Plant breeding as the science started with Mendel (1865) or with the rediscovery of his principles. But, men consciously have been molding the phenotype of hundreds plant species for 10000 years. Introduction of hybrid maize into the production has significantly increased average yields. Increase of yields, that can be attributed to genetic improvement of commercial maize hybrids, ranges from 33% to 89%. Breeders always look for the help of new technologies to be able to improve breeding in the most efficient way. Nowdays, biotechnology steps in as a technology that promises to solve some of the problems of classical plant breeding. Contribution of biotechnology to maize breeding can be devided into two major components, molecular markers and transformation. Under transformation are included all the techniques necessary to develop whole plants containing a stable transmissible genetic change. Untill now, several traits have been successfully incorporated into the maize hybrids: resistance to the European corn borer, resistance (tolerance) to a particular class of herbicides (glufosinate ammonium, glyphosate), male sterility, and resistance to corn root worm. In 2001 GM maize was grown on about 10 millions of hectars in the countries where specific trait or combination of them (event) was approved. In Croatia classical plant breeding has also improved average maize yields several times. But at the moment, primary because of low investment, only about 40% of genetic potencial of maize hybrids on the Croatian market is used on the average. GM maize (which has several improved input traits but doesn’ t have higher yields than their conventional counterparts) have not been grown so far in Croatia, because none of such hybrids has been approved. One of the most important characteristics of Croation agriculture is a small average size of farms (arround 3 ha). Should GM maize hybrids be introduced into Croatian agriculture special attention will have to be given to isolation between GM maize hybrids and commercial crops (conventional and organic crops) and even more so to isolation between GM maize hybrids and seed production of conventional crops.

maize; breeding; biotechnology

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