Beneficial Mutations

Crop - Reported benefits after mutations

Barley - Reduction in height, increased yield and day neutrality

Groundnut - Improved oil content

Wheat - Grain colour improved

Rice - dwarfing, increased yield.

In India, g induced mutations are carried out on seeds at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Bombay.

Despite the benefits, use of mutation as a breeding method has some serious draw backs. They include:

• most mutations lead to sterile progenies leading to stoppage of regeneration process.

• most mutations lead to mutants with useless characters.

• the effect of mutation may not be sustained in forthcoming generations.

• the rate of mutation is extremely low. Large number of samples will have to be subjected to mutation to expect small number to be mutated.