Plant Breeding & Genetics - scope, careers, colleges, skills, jobs, salary

“Even as the population doubled from three to six billion, we managed to race ahead with all kinds of technological and scientific events in agriculture – from using more fertilizers to mechanization to advanced plant breeding.” ~Nina Fedoroff

“The secret of improved plant breeding, apart from scientific knowledge, is love.” ~Luther Burbank

“Genetics was, I would say, the first part of biology to become a pretty good theoretical subject, based on the theory of the gene and patterns of inheritance of characteristics.” ~Linus Pauling

Plant breeding is the art and science of changing the traits of plants to produce desired characteristics. It has been used to improve the quality of nutrition in products for humans and animals. Plant breeding can be accomplished through many different techniques ranging from simply selecting plants with desirable characteristics for propagation, to methods that make use of knowledge of genetics and chromosomes, to more complex molecular techniques (see cultigen and cultivar). Genes in a plant are what determine what type of qualitative or quantitative traits it will have. The main purpose plant breeders are having is to create a specific outcome of plants and potentially new plant varieties.

The Indian Society of Genetics and Plant Breeding, the oldest and most prestigious registered society of practicing Geneticists and Plant Breeders from public and private institutions and the students pursuing Genetics and Plant Breeding disciplines, has vital role to play in fostering the progress of Science of Genetics and Plant Breeding in the country. The Society was founded 60 years ago in January 1941 at the Indian Congress Session at BHU, Varanasi by a group of Indian geneticists and plant breeders of that time led by Late Dr. B.P. Pal, the First Secretary and also the First Editor of the Society’s official publication, the Indian Journal of Genetics & Plant Breeding. The Journal Nature had acknowledged the formation of the society and publication of its Journal.

The Indian Journal of Genetics and Plant Breeding is a periodical for the publication of records of original research in all branches of genetics, plant breeding and cytology, including human genetics, molecular biology and biotechnology, and other cognate sciences of sufficient importance and of such a character as to be of primary interest to the geneticist and plant breeders.