Breeding

The goal of plant breeding is to adapt crops to man’s requirements. By selecting the best plants our ancestors started the process of adaptation some 8000 years ago. Each selection process was an intervention in the plant’s genome.

Plant breeding today aims at:

Maintaining existing varieties of crops
Continually improving crops that represent the basis of our food

The driving forces of plant breeding in the future will be new and improved agronomic traits, better processing qualities and – as a long-term objective – the enhancement of a crop's constituent components.

The basis for any improvement lies in the genetic background of the plant. Through plant breeding, new genetic combinations within plants and a broadening of their genetic background are possible, enabling them to meet new requirements.

If you have any further queries please contact:

Stephanie Meinecke
PLANTA Angewandte Pflanzengenetik und Biotechnologie GmbH
Grimsehlstrasse 31
37574 Einbeck
Phone: ++495561 / 311 – 728
Fax: ++495561 / 311 – 243
e-mail: s.meinecke@kws.com

Plant Cultivation Methods

Over the course of time the spectrum of breeding methods has been continually broadened and refined.

The History of Plant Breeding

Well into the middle of the 19^th century farmers retained a portion of the harvest each year as seed for the following year’s cultivation. ...

Breeding goals

High yield and better adaptation to mechanisation were major breeding goals in the 1970s.

The 1980s and 1990s saw ..

Sugar beet - Breeding goals

The present-day sugar beet varieties are the outcome of more than 140 years of breeding effort aimed ...