Induced mutation for crop improvement in China

The achievements made in the mutation breeding of plants in China are described. Many (325) mutant varieties and hundreds of various valuable strains, belonging to 29 different species, have been developed, released (or approved) for commercial production and used for cross-breeding. They cover about 9 million hectares, thus making a substantial contribution towards the national economy. Methodologies such as the choice of appropriate initial materials for treatment, the physical mutagens used in connection with chemicals and the methods of identification and selection have been applied and remarkable advances have been made in the improvement of mutation efficiency in plant breeding. Combined use of mutation induction and in vitro biotechniques has been practised to solve certain problems, e.g. to enhance wide-cross and to introduce alien genes into receptor species. (author). 57 refs, 1 fig., 7 tabs