Question

Describe the procedure of hybridization in plants.

Answer 1

Hybridisation in plants involves selecting parents, selfing them, emasculating the female flower (removing stamens), bagging to prevent undesired pollination, artificial crossing by transferring pollen from male to emasculated female, and raising the F₁ generation seedlings as hybrids.

1. Select parents: Select plants to be used as parents based on desirable traits that are lacking in a standard variety to increase chances of obtaining desirable hybrids.
2. Self-pollinate parents: Artificial self-pollination of parents to eliminate undesirable characters and obtain inbred lines. This step is automatic in self-pollinated crops.
3. Emasculate female flowers: In the flower selected as the female parent, the stamens (male parts) are removed before they mature.
   This prevents self-pollination.
4. Bag of emasculated flowers: The emasculated flower is covered with a polythene or butter-paper bag to prevent unwanted pollen from entering.
5. Cross-pollinate manually: Artificial cross-pollination is done by collecting viable pollen from the male parent and transferring it to the stigma of the emasculated female flower. The flower is then re-bagged.
6. Harvest and sow F₁ seeds to grow hybrids: Mature seeds from the cross (F₁ generation) are harvested, dried, stored, and sown separately in the following season. Plants grown from these seeds are hybrids.

This produces plants of unlike genetic constitution crossed to combine desired traits.