Plant Breeding: Principles and Methods

The book Plant Breeding: Principles and Methods was initially designed for B.Sc. (Ag.) students of Indian Universities, and it was extremely well-received by the entire plant breeding community. Gradually, it evolved to its present form, which provides up-to-date information on both conventional and modern approaches to crop improvement. The book has 45 chapters, which are organized in ten parts, and cover various aspects of germplasm conservation and utilization, breeding of self-and cross-pollinated as well as clonal crops, reeding for resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses, special breeding approaches like ideotype, improved quality, polyploidy, biotechnology, molecular markers, etc., evaluation and multiplication of improved strains, national and international organisations for crop improvement, and intellectual property rights. In this edition, two new chapters, viz., 'Novel Plant Breeding Tools' and 'Plant Breeding in Private Sector Environment - Seed Industry at A Glance for the New Entrant/Aspirant', have been added to enhance the usefulness of the book. This enlarged edition is expected to be immensely useful to all plant breeding students.

About the Author
Brahma Deo Singh, Ex-Emeritus Professor, School of Biotechnology, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India, obtained his Bachelor's degree in agriculture from Allahabad Agricultural Institute, Allahabad, India and Master's degree in Agricultural Botany from Govt.
Agricultural College, Kanpur, India with first position in the university, and was awarded the University Gold Medal. He obtained his Ph.D. degree from University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada. Prof. Singh has 40 years of teaching and research experience in the area of genetics, plant breeding and plant biotechnology with research interests in genetics and breeding of pulse crops, plant tissue culture, biological nitrogen fixation, and molecular markers. He has published over 160 research papers in reputed journals and authored more than two dozen books in genetics, plant breeding and biotechnology. He was awarded the First Prize of the Dr. Rajendra Prasad Puraskar in 1987 and 1990 by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, New Delhi for the books Padap Prajanan and Anuvanshiki, respectively.