UNIVERSITY OF MADRAS
B.Sc. DEGREE COURSE IN PLANT BIOLOGY AND PLANT BIOTECHNOLOGY
SEMESTER SYSTEM WITH CREDITS
(Effective from the Academic Year 2003-2004)

SYLLABUS

Semester VI - Paper IX - Genetics, Plant Breeding and Biostatistics

Lecture: 4 hours

THEORY

GENETICS:

Unit - 1:

Mendelian Genetics-Monohybrid, Dihybrid and Test cross ratios Deviations-Allelic Nonallelic gene interactions, Polygenic inheritance. Pseudo alleles. Lethal alleles
Chromose theory of linkage, crossing over, recombinations and mapping of genes on chromosomes. Sex determination in plants.
Chromosome number and structure. Polyploid origin, types and significance.

Unit - 2:

Extra nuclear inheritance and its application . Male sterility in Corn.
DNA structure and replication. RNA structure and types
Mutation- types; mutagenic agents(physical & chemical); significance.
Population genetics-Hardy-Weinberg principle.

PLANT BREEDING:

Unit - 3:

Principles involved in plant breeding-Its importance in Green revolution with reference to Wheat, Rice, Sugarcane, Maize and Cotton.

Methosds of crop improvement: Selection (pure line, mass and clonal), hybridization, introduction & acclimatization.

Heterosis-causes and effects

Unit - 4:

Polyploidy in plant breeding, Breeding for disease resistance. Improved seed production and testing techniques.

BIOSTATISTICS:

Unit - 5

Measures of central tendency-Mean, Median and Mode.

Measures of dispersion- Standard deviation, Mean deviation and Quartile deviation. Testing of hypothesis.

Simple definition of Null hypothesis, Alternate hypothesis, Type-I error, Type -II Error, level of significance Problems based on large samples, t-test, Chi- Square test.

Vital statistics and Non-parametric tests- Rank test, Median test, Run test.