RZ-100-wt4-E-flipbook-240702 - Flipbook - Page 17
Improving plant breeding
During this period, Rijk Zwaan emerges as a true
pioneer in the plant breeding sector. He is one of
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Rijk xxxx
Zwaan’s
Winterreuzen
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Leek
the first people to use ‘pedigree selection’ as his
main selection method. If breeders used any
form of selection in those days, it always involved
‘mass selection’. With this method, the grower
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Evergreen
Cucumber
chooses a number of good specimens from a
sowing field and uses the seed from these plants
to extract new seed. It is true that the quality of
the seed extracted in this way is better than from
the average sowing field, but it never entirely has
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the same traits. Moreover, certain traits of a plant
are not hereditary at all but are influenced by
external conditions.
Then there are also seed merchants who apply a
‘selection’ process where, before the plants go to
seed, they simply remove the least good specimens
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Purchase
selection fields
Bergschenhoek
from the sowing field and then extract the seed
from the remaining plants and sell them.
Rijk Zwaan rightly states the following about this
Pioneering role
Page with promotional
method in a small volume that he published in 1931:
The pioneering role adopted by the ‘Zwaans’
text from the first
reaps its rewards for both Andries and Rijk Zwaan.
company brochure.
‘While this can indeed be called a method of
Andries even receives international recognition for
seed extraction, it has nothing to do with selection
his breeding work on spinach and peas.
as such. The results that can be achieved with this
Rijk Zwaan also continues on his breeding path to
method are therefore relatively modest. Prevention of
further improve his seeds using new methods. As
too rapid a decline in the variety is the very limit that
the knowledge about hereditary factors in horti-
it may be expected to achieve.’
cultural crops increases, Rijk Zwaan is also able to
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adapt his ideas about selection methods.
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Rijk Zwaan is clearly not satisfied with the above
method, but the mass selection method is not
At the end of the 1920s, he decided to use a much
Andries Zwaan,
accurate enough for him either. Although mass
more accurate (but also more time-consuming)
1888-1965.
selection will continue to be the most widely used
method of pedigree selection instead of the
selection method until the 1950s, Rijk Zwaan starts
widely used method of mass selection. In small
looking for new ways to significantly improve the
experimental gardens, he takes seed only from the
quality of his seed.
best specimen in the sowing field. He then breeds
further with this seed and then again selects the
specimen with the best hereditary traits, with
which he again continues to breed. Always taking
note of the plant’s traits, he can determine which
traits are hereditary and which are not.
1929-1930
Turnover
Omzet
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1924-1940 | On the eve of breeding recognition
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