Tag: biotechnology

Horticulture has been defined as the agriculture of plants, mainly for food, materials, comfort and beauty. According to American horticulturist Liberty Hyde Bailey, "Horticulture is the growing of flowers, fruits and vegetables, and of plants for ornament and fancy." Hence, vegetable crop cultivation is known as Horticulture.

Wide hybridization can be used to transfer the desirable variability. It is used for producing haploids, diploids from tetraploids and trihaploids from hexaploids.

A. G.J Mendal is known for his discovery of fundamental laws of inheritance.

Totipotency - The ability of cells such as an embryonic stem cell to differentiate into any type of body cell. Plant cells are also totipotent, which helps to explain why a graft of a plant can generate a whole new individual out of just a small branch cutting.
Totipotent cells can form all the cell types in a body, plus the extraembryonic, or placental, cells. Embryonic cells within the first couple of cell divisions after fertilization are the only cells that are totipotent. Pluripotent cells can give rise to all of the cell types that make up the body; embryonic stem cells are considered pluripotent. Multipotent cells can develop into more than one cell type, but are more limited than pluripotent cells; adult stem cells and cord blood stem cells are considered multipotent.

The Rht-B1b and Rht-D1b dwarfing genes were derived from Norin-10, which was a semi-dwarf variety bred in Japan and released in 1935 (Gale and Youssefian, 1985). Norin-10 was used in US breeding programs in the 1950s in order to improve lodging resistance in winter wheat, in which lodging was a serious problem when high rates of nitrogen fertilizers were applied. A selection from a cross of Norin-10 with the US variety, Brevor was particularly promising and was used by Borlaug in the development of the green revolution wheat varieties. Wheat Norin-10 is a semi-dwarf wheat cultivar with very large ears that was bred at an experimental station in Iwate Prefecture, Japan. Norin-10 helped developing countries, such as India and Pakistan, to increase the productivity of their crops from approximately 60% during the green revolution. Thus, the correct answer is option B.

A crescograph is a device for measuring growth in plants. It was invented in the early 20th century by Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose. The Bose crescograph uses a series of clockwork gears and a smoked glass plate to record the movement of the tip of a plant (or its roots) at magnifications of up to 10,000. Marks are made on the plate at intervals of a few seconds, demonstrating how the rate of growth varies under varying stimuli. Bose experimented with temperature, chemicals, gases and electricity.

Hybrid plants can be developed by the breeding of the plants of different species. The parents are genetically different plants. The hybrid of maize plant was developed in order to obtain higher yield. The plants with the trait of producing higher yield were crossed with the other plant with superior character. The number of grains in the plant and the number of fruits is counted to obtain a higher yield. 

In intravarietal hybridization, the crosses are made between the plants of same variety. Thus, option C is correct.