Recent Advances in Applied Plant Genetics - Paper Presented at the Fifty-Fifth Annual Meeting

One has but to compare the present-day methods with those of the pre-Mendelian era to realize fully the extent to which recent advances in genetics have been utilized in the improvement of plants. Modern plant breeding research not only utilizes the information from fundamental genetic investigations but also formulates basic facts that may result from the more practical phases of work. In the early periods of plant breeding when the different crops consisted of many biotypes, improvement was comparatively easy and often consisted of but simple selection of the strains best suited to the new environments. When this initial improvement had been made the problem of efficient production was far from permanently solved for with increased intensity of agriculture came new problems and hazards in crop production. The solution of these problems has been possible largely because of the advances made in genetics and closely related branches of science