SyBrid - A New Breeding Method for Food Legumes

Legumes in general, are grown under subsistence agriculture and their productivity is invariably low. Being predominantly a self pollinated group of crops, only inbred cultivars were bred in the past with marginal yield advantages. An alternate breeding method has been proposed that is capable of exploiting part of hybrid vigour to improve yield potential of some legume crops without any serious seed production hassle. The breeding product, named SyBrid, is an amalgam of the concepts of breeding synthetic and hybrid cultivars. It uses natural cross-pollination but no male sterility system. Potentially, the SyBrid cultivars are expected to boost yield by a margin of 10-15 % or more. The seed production of SyBrid cultivars is cost effective and easy.