Utilization in Plant Breeding

Abstract

It needs no overemphasizing that the use of male sterility in commercial production of the hybrid seed offers a promising tool in the hands of plant breeder. An initial wave of enthusiasm starting from the success reported in onion and sorghum, stimulated several attempts in other crops as well and in fact, successful projects are already underway in maize, tomato, barley and sugarbeets. In Germany a commercial seed firm obtained patent rights for the production of hybrid seed of sugarbeets using male sterility (Dorst, 1952). The potent usefulness of such methods has been also indicated for many other crops including cabbage (Detjen, 1927), guyale (Powers and Gardner, 1945), cucurbits (Scott and Riner, 1946), castor (Claassen and Hoffman, 1950), tobacco (Clayton, 1951), cotton (Loden and Richmond, 1951) and carrot (Welch and Grim-Ball, 1947).