What happened before and after Mendel ?

Pre-Mendelian History of Plant Breeding:

9000 BCE: First evidence of plant domestication in the hills above the Tigris River.

8000 BCE: The earliest known form of plant breeding begins with the domestication of crops like wheat, barley, and legumes in the Fertile Crescent (modern-day Middle East).

3000 BCE: Domestication of all important food crops in the Old World completed (eastern hemisphere).

2000 BCE: The Chinese develop techniques for selective breeding of crops like rice, soybeans, and millet.

1000 BCE: Domestication of all important food crops in the New World completed (western hemisphere).

700 BCE: Assyrians (modern Iraq and surrounding) and Babylonians (Bagdad and Karbala) hand pollinate date palm.

800-1400 CE: Islamic scholars make significant contributions to plant breeding, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, by introducing new crops and refining cultivation practices.

1694 CE: Rudolph Jacob Camerarius of Germany first to demonstrate sex in plants and suggested crossing as a method to obtain new plant types. Described his findings in the form of a letter to colleague, De sexu plantarum (1694: "On the sex of plants"), and in Opuscula botanica (1697; "Botanical Works").

1716 CE: Cotton Mather of USA observed natural crossing in maize (yellow corn plants adjacent to blue or red corn had red or blue corn.

1719 CE: Fairchild created first artificial hybrid - Sweet William (Dianthus barbatur L.) * Carnation (Dianthus caryophyllus) -Fairchild male

1727 CE: Vilmorin Company of France introduced the pedigree method of breeding. Philippe-Victoire Levique de Vilmorin and his wife revived the plant and seed company of her parents Claude Geoffrey and Pierre Andrieux, which later became the Vilmerin-Andrieux seed company in the mid- 18th century. The Vilmorin breeding efforts in France included work on individual plant selection based on progeny test (was used for improving sugar content in sugar beet), which was called Vilmorin Isolation Principle.

1753 CE: The Swedish Botanist Carlous Linnaeus (1753) published Species Plantarum and established the binomial nomenclature, which consisted of generic name and a species same, for example, Zea mays for maize. This work helped in the understanding of the plant species as the system used number and arrangement of reproductive organs (stamens and pistils) as the critical characteristics for nomenclature.

1761-1766 CE: Koelreuter of Germany demonstrated that hybrid offspring received traits from both parents and were intermediate in most traits; produced first scientific hybrid using tobacco. Systematic investigations into hybridization in 54 species belonging to 13 genera by Joseph Koelreuter in Germany, who promoted theory of fertilization and artificial hybridization.

1847: "Raid's Yellow Dent" maize developed. Robert Reid brought Golden Hopkin in Ohio in 1846. The poor stand of Golden Hopkin was filled with dwarf variety Little Yellow corn. Reid Yellow Dent variety was bred a consequence of the natural crossing and selection of progeny between these two varieties.

1856: Louis de Vilmorin developed the progeny test, that is, evaluation of the worth of plants based on performance of their progenies. This principle is also known as the Vilmorin isolation Principle or Vilmorin Method, which involved selection of single plants followed by separate testing of their progeny (i.e., progeny test)

Post-Mendelian History of Plant Breeding:

1866: Gregor Mendel published his discoveries in Experiments in plant hybridization, cumulating in the formulation of laws of inheritance and discovery of unit factors (genes) by working on garden pea.

1899: CG Hopkins described the ear-to-row selection method of breeding in maize to improve the chemical composition of maize seed.

1900: Mendel's laws of heredity rediscovered independently by Correns of Germany, de Vries of Holland, and von Tschermak of Austria

1903: Wilhelm Johannsen, A Danish Botanist gave pure-line theory of selection in Phaseolus vulgaris.

1904-1905: Nilsson-Ehle proposed the multiple factor explanation for inheritance of color in wheat pericarp. Red and white pericarp (63:1) three gene pairs on the basis of F3 segregation.

1908-1909: Hardy of England and Weinberg of Germany developed the law of equilibrium of populations famously known as Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium.

1908-1910: Edward East published his work on inbreeding. "The decrease in vigour due to inbreeding naturally cross-fertilized species and the increase in vigour due to crossing naturally self-fertilized species are manifestations of one phenome- non. This phenomenon is heterozygosis. Crossing produces heterozygosis in all characters by which the parent plants differ. Inbreeding tends to produce homozygosis automatically".

1909: Shull conducted extensive research to develop inbreds to produce hybrids.

1917: Jones developed first commercial hybrid maize.

1926: Pioneer Hi-bred Corn Company established as first seed company in the world.

1935: Vavilov published - The scientific basis of plant breeding.

1940: Harlan used the bulk breeding selection method in breeding.

1944: Avery. MacLeod, and McCarty discovered DNA is hereditary material.

1945: Hull proposed recurrent selection method of breeding.

1950: McClintock discovered the Ac-Ds system of transposable elements in maize.

1953: Watson, Crick, and Wilkins proposed a model for double helix DNA structure.

1970: Borlaug received Nobel Prize for the Green Revolution by developing dwarf wheat varieties.

1972: Paul Berg- gene splicing technology, Cohen and Boyer collaboration introduced the recombinant DNA technology.

1994: The first genetically modified (GM) crop, the Flavr Savr tomato, is commercially released for market.

2000 to Present day: Rapid advancements in genomics, transcriptomics, and genome editing technologies, such as CRISPR-Cas9, revolutionize plant breeding by enabling precise genetic modifications and accelerating the development of improved crop varieties.