Figure 5.

An overview of conventional and modern mutation breeding approaches for crop improvement. The figure illustrates the systematic approach for introducing intended and unintended genomic variation in crops for trait discovery, germplasm development, and commercial release of new crop varieties. After the introduction of genomic variation, the mutant populations go through a series of selection and testing to remove undesirable mutations and phenotypic variations. The best-performing line is selected for subsequent commercial release. This breeding process is common to all methods used for crop product development (Kaiser et al., 2020).