Plant breeding is defined as identifying and selecting desirable traits in plants and combining this into one individual plant. Since 1900, Mendel’s laws of genetics provided the scientific basis for plant breeding. Selection is the most ancient and basic procedure in plant breeding. Selection procedures used in plant breeding have …

Plant improvement must have been started with the primitive man changing his mode of life from a nomad to an agriculturist. To have a crop in the next season, he had obtained seeds from the first crop. For this, unconsciously the process of selection is practiced for a long time …

The oomycetes, also known as “water molds”, are a group of several hundred organisms that include some of the most devastating plant pathogens.  The diseases they cause include seedling blights, damping-off, root rots, foliar blights and downy mildews. Some notable diseases are the late blight of potato, downy mildew of …