Authors: Mohd. Harun, Cini Varghese, Seema Jaggi, Anindita Datta and Arpan Bhowmik
Hybridization technique is one of the most important component in the area of commercial plant and animal production. The most important goal of any hybridization technique is to improve the genetic potential of parental lines and produce better offspring's. Similarly, in any breeding programme the main aim is to improve the genetic potential of individual lines. In any hybrid breeders are always interested in stability other than higher yield potential. These characters are directly influenced by the techniques used in the hybridization programme. The most commonly used techniques for the purpose of hybrid production are two-way cross, three-way cross and four-way cross. Among these techniques, two-way crosses are the lower order crosses and are most often used due to their simplicity in use by the breeders. Other two techniques are higher order crosses and are less often used by the breeders due to their complexity, but they are better in many ways as compared two two-way crosses. As compared to lower order cross hybrids, higher order cross hybrids are genetically more stable due to broad genetic base. Higher order cross hybrids shows better individual as well as population buffering mechanisms as compared to lower cross hybrids. There are a lot of examples in the area of plant and animal sciences where it has been established that higher order cross hybrids gives better results. According to the research work of Shunmugathai and Srinivasan (2012), three-way crosses are the commonly used economic technique of maize production. If we consider the area of poultry production then also according to Khwaja et al. (2013), three-way crossed chickens are found to have lower mortality rate, higher egg production and better egg size as compared to two-way cross bred chickens. The piggery production also amounts for better feed efficiency and faster carcass development when bred using higher order crosses. The methods are also used for silkworm production.
Size: 747 KB
About Author / Additional Info:
I am working as scientist in the division of design of experiments, ICAR-Indian Agricultural Statistics Research Institute for more than two years.