ABSTRACT
Plant breeding started about 9000 to 11,000 years ago when man started with the domestication of wild plants. Farmers and growers tried to improve their crops with desired traits through trial and error. The evolutionary theories of Darwin and the genetic experiments of Mendel that were developed at the end of the 19th century gave a further impulse to plant breeding and made it more efficient. During the 20th century breeding science was further improved through knowledge of genetics, plant pathology and entomology (Bruins, 2009).
