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Life Science Research and Sustainable Development ISBN: 978-98-84663-33-9

Mutation Breeding: Tool for crop improvement

Dr. Navnath Kashid
Professor, Department of Botany
Baburaoji Adaskar Mahavidyalaya, Kaij, Beed. MS.

Keywords: Abstract:
Mutation This study is comprehensive overview of the various techniques and
breeding, workflows available to researchers today in the field of molecular breeding,
mutagens, and how these tools complement the ones already used in traditional
applications, breeding. Both genetic and phenotypic screens are evaluated. Mutation
achievements. breeding technique has played a major role in generation of climate smart
varieties. Plant mutagenesis is rapidly coming of age in the aftermath of
recent developments in high-resolution molecular and biochemical
techniques. By combining the high variation of mutagenesis populations
with novel screening methods, traits that are almost impossible to identify by
conventional breeding are now being developed and characterized at the
molecular level.

Introduction:
Mutation breeding technique has played a major role in generation of climate smart varieties.
These crop varieties have been shown to with stand wide range of environmental fluctuation.
Globally millions of hectares of cultivated land have been devoted for the cultivation of this
mutant crop varieties and intern billons of revenue have been generated (Jain, 2010).
The main objective of mutation breeding is to increase food production and provide
sustainable nutrition (Goyal et al., 2009 and Wani et al., 2011). World Food Security (FAO) on food
plan action observed that, "Food security at the individual, household, national and global level
exists where all people at all times have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and
nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life’’.
Plant breeders and farmers are under pressure to sustain food production under the climatic
changes. The food prices are continuously increasing up worldwide in both developed and
developing countries.
The mutant varieties have been grown on large scale by farmers in their fields, and
increase in food production resulted from cultivation of the mutant varieties could be translated
into increased food security, since this would be accessible for the people in need. Mutation
breeding programme should be clearly planned and should be large enough with sufficient
facilities to screen large population (Wani et al.,2017; Raina et al., 2016).
In mutation breeding, desirable mutations are induced in crop plants with the use of
physical or chemical mutagens (Raina et al., 2017). The variability generated through induced
mutations are either released as new variety or used as the parent for subsequent hybridization
programmes. Conventional breeding in combination with other techniques such as mutagenesis,
biotechnology, genetic engineering or molecular breeding utilize local genetic resources for
developing new cultivars that could handle frequent climatic changes (Amin et al., 2016).
Mutation breeding is known to induce genetic variability in the crops that show higher yield and
wider adaptability (Khursheed et al., 2016).
Types of mutations

https://jesjalna.org/Zoology-Publications/index.html 1 Department of Zoology, J. E. S. College, Jalna