Challenges of integrating conventional breeding and biotechnology: a personal view!

The development of ‘scientific’ breeding methodologies in the first half of the 20 th Century was based partly on the application of genetic theory following the rediscovery of Mendel’s Laws, but mostly on developing procedures for systematic phenotypic selection. Although, new technologies in tissue culture, pathology, statistics and quantitative genetics contributed to advances in the second half of the 20 th Century, these were limited. The...