Plant Breeding and Cultivar Development

Dr. Dhan Pal Singh is a former Professor of genetics and plant breeding and pulse breeder for 34 years. He taught several courses of plant breeding and has developed more than 41 higher yielding and disease resistant varieties of pulse crops and registered several useful and unique germplasm lines. Dr. Singh has written 2 books (1) “Breeding for Resistance to Diseases and Insect Pests” (1986), Springer-Verlag Heidelberg, Germany; and (2) “Disease and Insect Resistance in Plants” (2005), Science Publishers, USA and Oxford & IBH, India. He has also published 164 research papers, and nine book chapters. He has been inducted as a fellow by the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Indian Society of Genetics and Plant Breeding, and Indian Society of Pulses Research and Development. He has won numerous national achievement awards. Dr. Asheesh K Singh is Professor and Soybean Breeder at the Iowa State University, USA. He has breeding work experience in soybean, wheat, maize, barley and oats. He has developed/co-developed 46 cultivars and 13 germplasm lines. These cultivars are annually grown in ~10 million acres in North America. Singh has published more than 100 peer reviewed articles in reputed international journals on topics related to plant breeding, genomics, phenomics and advanced data analytics. He has delivered more than 60 invited presentations nationally and internationally, hosted numerous research tours and engaged in many media interactions. Singh teaches two graduate level plant breeding courses and serves as guest lecturer in other courses including a graduate level Phenomics course. He has been recognized with the Sustainable Futures Award by the Agricultural Institute of Canada, Monsanto Chair in Soybean Breeding, several Institutional research achievement awards, and a team award for Plant Breeding E-Learning in Africa. He is a faculty fellow of the R F Baker Center for Plant Breeding and Plant Sciences Institute at Iowa State University. Dr. Arti Singh is an Assistant Professor at the Iowa State University, USA. She has extensive experience in breeding for disease and pest resistance in Brassica, Mung bean, Rice, Soybean, Urd bean, and Wheat. She has published more than 25 peer reviewed papers in reputed journals including the Trends in Plant Sciences, and Proceedings National Academy of Sciences, USA. She has also co-authored a book “Disease and Insect Resistance in Plants” (2005), Science Publishers, USA. She has made several invited scientific presentations nationally and internationally. She teaches graduate level courses on Host-Pest Interactions and Plant Breeding Methods, and mentors graduate students in Agronomy, Interdepartmental Genetics and Genomics, Engineering, Entomology, Pathology). She won the prestigious Jeanie Borlaug Laube Women in Triticum (WIT) Early Career Award in 2013, and a team award for Plant Breeding E-Learning in Africa in 2019.

• 1. Plant Breeding - Past, Present, and Future Perspectives2. Mode of Reproduction in Crop Plants3. Genetics in Relation to Plant Breeding4. Primer on Population and Quantitative Genetics5. Plant Genetic Resources6. Wilde Hybridization7. Haploids and Polyploidy8. Hybridization and Selection in Self-Pollinated Crops9. Mass and Pure Line Selection10. Bulk Method11. Pedigree Method12. Single Seed Descent Method13. Backcross Method14. Mutation Breeding15. Inbreeding Depression and Heterosis16. Population Improvement17. Recurrent Selection in Self-pollinated Crops18. Synthetic and Composite Varieties19. Hybrid Varieties20. Breeding Methods Used in Asexual Crops21. Breeding for Resistance to Abiotic Stresses22. Breeding for Resistance to Biotic Stresses23. Intellectual Property Rights and Protection24. Participatory Plant Breeding25. Breeding of Crop Ideotypes26. Field Plot Designs in Plant Breeding27. Molecular Tools in Crop Improvement and Cultivar Development28. Phenomics and Machine Learning in Crop Improvement