Mutation Breeding in Cereals and Legumes

Abstract

During the past more than 50 years, mutation breeding has been successfully utilized for crop improvement, to supplement the efforts made using conventional methods of plant breeding. As early as 1942, the first mutant for disease resistance was reported in barley showing resistance to powdery mildew (Freisleben and Lein, 1942). This encouraged further work on mutation breeding, leading to the release of mutant cultivars in several crops. The FAO/IAEA Mutant Varieties Database contained 1790 accessions in June 1996. Among these varieties, 854 were of cereals and 216 of legumes. The majority of varieties among the cereals came from rice (324), barley (256) and bread wheat (146). Many of these mutant varieties were released during the past 10 years (Maluszynski et al., 1991, 1992, 1995). Although, one may not accept that all the listed mutant cultivars really resulted from induced mutations, there is no doubt about the potential which mutation breeding offers for crop improvement. The attributes which are reported to have been improved by mutation breeding include a wide range of characters, including tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses, duration of flowering and maturity, and other yield-contributing characters (Micke, 1984, 1988, 1991). Due to recent interest in new biotechnology, induced mutations have also proved useful in the preparation of genetic maps (Schwarzacher, 1994) that will facilitate molecular marker-assisted plant breeding in the future.