Genetic Concepts and Fruit Breeding

Abstract

Fruit breeding involves both hybridization among cultivated forms and crossing of cultivated forms with wild species. Commercially grown fruit plants are generally heterozygous. Heterozygosity often exists in some of the wild species of fruit plants chosen for crossing with the cultivated forms. Some vegetative and fruit characters of these crops are inherited quantitatively. In some cases the plants used in breeding vary in chromosome number. These facts are not always taken into consideration in the approach to breeding of fruit crops, especially in the hybridization of cultivated forms with wild species. Fruit breeders too often have limited themselves to a one generation cross and have looked for, one might say, the "ultimate" among F1 offspring. Sometimes, by good fortune, there may appear among such progenies individual plants that possess some mediocre qualities that are considered "aeceptable", but in fact do not have the desired high fruit qualities for which each particular kind of fruit is essentially grown. Unfortunately such plants are often introduced as varieties.