Abstract

Many a sudden crisis in the agricultural industry and economy of a country have been successfully solved by the crop breeders. The achievements in the field of plant introduction and development of new tracts have considerably helped the maximisation of production in most countries. Some of the notable contributions are (a) the discovery of new beet varieties having a sugar content of eight percent over the older types when enemy blockade threatened to cut off sugar supplies to France during the Napoleonic wars, (b) the selection of blight-immune varieties of potato when the Irish peasants were faced with total loss of their staple crop, (c) the development of early fruiting varieties of cotton which staved off the ravages of boll weevil in America, (d) the evolution of wilt resistant strains of cotton which made the cultivations of wilt sick S. E. American possible, (e) the breeding of new races of cotton and wheat suited to the extensive areas in U.S.S.R. characterised by low mean temperature and short cropping seasons, (f) the conversion of Egypt, a minor cotton-growing country during the early part of the nineteenth century, into the main supply base for the world's requirements of long staple cotton, (g) the large expansion of cotton cultivation in South Africa, through release of jassid-resistant cotton varieties, (h) the successful exploitation of hybrid vigour in maize by America and (i) extension of sugarcane cultivation in India to regions originally considered unsuitable.

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