Limitations to Haploid Breeding
As discussed above, haploid breeding has not given the desired and expected dividends, despite substantial investments made on haploid research during 1970-2000. Following are some widely recognized limitations : (i) Haploids can not be obtained in high frequency required for selection. (ii) The cost-benefit ratio in haploid breeding is often not favourable, thus discouraging the use of haploid breeding despite its obvious advantages. (iii) Haploids will express recessive deleterious traits, and additional deleterious mutations may arise during anther culture. (iv) Different ploidy levels may be available so that haploid status may need to be confirmed cytologically; alternatively pollen culture may need to be used, which is more expensive and gives relatively low success rate.