ABSTRACT
Modern crop improvement programs develop elite lines by multidisciplinary approaches. Development of these lines is dependent on crop breeding objectives, the type of crops, and end-use products (long term vs. short-term, reproductive cycle, molecular-aided vs. conventional, and loss vs. benet). Other important qualities include: inheritance patterns and heritability of the selected characters (sex expression, owering date, disease and insect resistance, yield heterosis, modifying plant architecture and quality); horticultural and agronomic traits; and nutritional quality, including processing and consumer preferences from available germplasm (Singh and Lebeda, 2007). Thus, crop improvement requires a multidisciplinary approach such as agronomy, physiology, microbiology, plant pathology and entomology, genetics, cytogenetics, plant breeding, genetic resources, distant hybridization, and molecular biology (Figure 12.1).
