Breeding plants to create new varieties and improve upon old ones is a hobby that nearly everyone
can engage in. The crossing techniques are easy to learn and you can experiment with many kinds of plants. Generally, amateur plant breeders work with traits that are fairly easy to change—for example, flower color, fruit shape, or plant size. Nevertheless, although your experiment may be
simple, it is possible for you to produce unusual or beautiful plants. In order to breed plants successfully it is important to understand the principles of plant reproduction. The purpose of this circular is to explain these principles and to describe some of the simple techniques that you can use to produce new varieties or strains of plants.
