Open access, freely available online " Some qualities nature carefully fi xes and transmits, but some, and those the fi ner, she exhales with the breath of the individual as too costly to perpetuate. But I notice also that they may become fi xed and permanent in any stock, by painting and repainting them on every individual, until at last nature adopts them and bakes them into her porcelain " —...

Laboratory of Genetics, Department of Plant Sciences, Graduate School of Experimental Plant Sciences, Wageningen University, Dreyenlaan 2, 6703 HA Wageningen, The Netherlands (M.K.); and Laboratory of Plant Breeding, Department of Plant Sciences, Graduate Schools of Experimental Plant Science and Production Ecology and Resource Conservation, P.O. Box 386, Wageningen University, 6700 AJ Wagening...

Cleveland, David A. (Department of Anthropology and the Environmental Studies Program, University of California, Santa Barbara 93106-3210, USA, [email protected]), Daniela Soleri (Office of Arid Lands Studies, University of Arizona, 1955 E 6th St, Tucson, AZ 85719, USA; current address, Center for People, Food and Environment, 340 Arboleda, Santa Barbara, CA 93110, USA, and Institute fo...

In any hybridization program, recognition of the best combination of two (or more) parental genotypes to maximize variance within related breeding populations, and as a result the chance of recognizing superior transgressive segregants in the segregating populations, are the most critical challenge to plant breeders. Since the combining ability was introduced in 1942, it has been widely adopted...

Cleveland, David A. (Department of Anthropology and the Environmental Studies Program, University of California, Santa Barbara 93106-3210, USA, [email protected]), Daniela Soleri (Office of Arid Lands Studies, University of Arizona, 1955 E 6 th St, Tucson, AZ 85719, USA; current address, Center for People, Food and Environment, 340 Arboleda, Santa Barbara, CA 93110, USA, and Institute f...

Conventional plant breeding exploits existing genetic variability and introduces new variability by mutagenesis. This has proven highly successful in securing food supplies for an ever-growing human population. The use of genetically modified plants is a complementary approach but all plant breeding techniques have limitations. Here, we discuss how the recent evolution of targeted mutagenesis a...