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Plant breeder/geneticist: Job description and activities

Job description

Plant breeders/geneticists apply a range of techniques to produce new and improved varieties of plants. Their role is vital to the agricultural industry, allowing it to increase and maintain yields in important crops grown for many uses, such as food and pharmaceuticals.

They breed into plants various traits useful to farmers, such as disease resistance, drought tolerance and differing maturation times, and characteristics, such as nutritional value, that appeal to consumers.

In recent years plant geneticists have enhanced the traditional work of crossing existing plants and selecting new strains: their expertise allows quicker, more accurate crossing of plant progeny by selecting the plants containing the genes of interest.

Typical work activities

Work activities vary between academic, research and commercial settings and according to specialist area and level, but may include:

• drawing up aims and objectives, and costing and securing funding for work;
• researching methods and techniques for improving plant breeding;
• identifying and selecting plants exhibiting desirable traits based on natural genetic variation;
• crossing plants to produce new breeding material for field and glasshouse trials;
• analysing and scientifically assessing progeny in laboratory and field trials, and selecting the best varieties;
• conducting scientific projects, which may be laboratory-based, especially in the winter months;
• multiplying up and producing virus-free plants, using tissue culture for field trials;
• maintaining detailed records throughout the research and development cycle;
• managing, supporting and training technical and field staff;
• keeping up to date in the fast-moving area of science and translating ideas from scientific literature into new approaches to breeding problems;
• staying informed about industry developments, monitoring the activities of competitors (in commercial settings) and developing a product market profile;
• responding to enquiries from farmers, agronomists and other professionals;
• writing and presenting work to other scientists and publishing scientific findings;
• liaising with and visiting other scientists, commercial breeders and funding bodies;
• using advanced and sophisticated molecular biology techniques to study and manipulate genes, including DNA transfer within or between species.

There is a continuous need for new varieties to adapt to changing growing conditions, consumer demands and shifts in agricultural or environmental policies. However, developing a new strain may take up to 12 years, or even longer. Time is spent:

• selecting plants with desired attributes and assessing them for yield, disease resistance and end-user quality;
• purifying and multiplying seed of the most promising samples for entry to official trials.

Breeders have developed ways to enhance the speed, accuracy and scope of the breeding process, using artificial growth facilities and modern laboratory techniques, such as the use of DNA markers (genetic fingerprinting).

Genetic engineering can produce significant changes in crop characteristics and value in a single generation and has the potential to make the breeding process quicker and more efficient. The ongoing debate about genetically modified food and crops is likely to have a significant effect on the future of plant breeding in the UK.

AGCAS

Written by Janet Hindle, University of Leeds

Last updated:

February 2009

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