The Effects of Cross and Self Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom / Charles Darwin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Darwin, Charles, author.

Series:

Cambridge library collection. Darwin, Evolution and Genetics.

Cambridge library collection. Darwin, Evolution and Genetics

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Self-pollination.

Plant breeding.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (496 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Other Title:

The Effects of Cross & Self Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom

Place of Publication:

Place of publication not identified : publisher not identified, 1876.

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Darwin's impetus for the experiments of which the results are recorded in this book was 'a mere accidental observation; and indeed it required the accident to be repeated before my attention was thoroughly aroused to the remarkable fact that seedlings of self-fertilised parentage are inferior, even in the first generation, in height and vigour to seedlings of cross-fertilised parentage'. After eleven years of meticulous experimentation and observation, described in this volume, he was ready to publish in 1876 the detailed study which he regarded as a companion volume to his 1862 On the Various Contrivances by which British and Foreign Orchids are Fertilised by Insects. His 'first and most important of the conclusions which may be drawn ... is that cross-fertilisation is generally beneficial, and self-fertilisation injurious': this understanding is of course the basis of all modern plant breeding programmes.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Part of the metadata in this record was created by AI, based on the text of the resource.

ISBN:

0-511-69420-2