Many important field crops such as maize, sorghum, sunflower and rice are commercially panted as hybrids, as well as many horticultural crops and floriculture.
Hybrid development is one of the most breakthroughs in agriculture, mainly because of the increase of yield in open pollinated species. To be commercially viable, hybrids must usually offer a yield gain of 15-20% over open pollinated varieties.
To a farmer, the advantage of using hybrid maize seed lie in the increased yield and the greater uniformity of the crop. The increased yield results, in part, from the absence of barren, infertile or earless plants in the crop and also from the uniformly large ears.
It is estimated that hybrids seeds of rice have yield advantage over inbred seeds by an average of more than 30 percent, or an additional of more than a ton per hectare in Philippines.
The high yield potential of hybrid rice enables China to produce more rice on less land and provides opportunities for crop diversification.
Hybrids can be extremely uniform in plant height and time to maturity. This characteristics are useful in mechanized agriculture.
Hybridization in agriculture
