This course is a brief
introduction to crop improvement. Topics include the nature and goals of plant
breeding, patterns of evolution in cultivated crops, plant introduction and
domestication, genetic basis and methods of breeding self-pollinated and cross
pollinated crops, breeding for diseases resistance, polyploidy in plant
breeding and inters-specific hybridization. Practicals will focus of flower
morphology and anatomy of cross pollinated and self-pollinated plants,
emasculation, field trips to research institutions where there are breeding programmes.