Merits and Demerits of Ideotype Breeding
Merits:
1. Ideotype breeding is an effective method of enhancing yield through manipulation of various morphological and physiological crop characters. Thus, it exploits both morphological and physiological variation.
2. In this method of various morphological and physiological traits are specified and each character or trait contributes towards enhanced yield.
3. Ideotype breeding involves experts from the discipline of plant breeding, physiology, biochemistry, entomology and plant pathology. Each specialist contributes in the development of model plants for traits related to his field.
4. Ideotype breeding is an effective method of breaking yield barriers through the use of genetically controlled physiological variation for various characters contributing towards higher yield.
5. Ideotype breeding provides solution to several problems at a time like disease, insect and lodging resistance, maturity duration, yield and quality by combining desirable genes for these traits from different sources into a single genotype.
6. It is efficient method of developing cultivars for specific or environment.
Demerits:
1. Incorporation of several desirable morphological and physiological and disease resistance traits from different sources into a single genotype is a difficult task. Sometimes, combining of some characters is not possible due to tight linkage between desirable and undesirable characters. Presence of such linkage hinders the progress of Ideotype breeding.
2. Ideotype breeding is a slow method of cultivar development, because combining together of various morphological and physiological features from different sources takes more time than traditional breeding where improvement is made in yield and one or two other characters.
3. Ideotype breeding is not a substitute for traditional or conventional breeding. It is a supplement to the former.
4. Ideotype is a moving object which changes with change in knowledge, new requirements, national policy, etc. Thus new Ideotype have to evolved to meet the changing and increasing demands of economic products.