Breeding is the development of superior varieties/cultivars/ genotypes/germplasm lines, and even hybrids, for commercial production or utilization in breeding programs. Cotton breeding has been going on for centuries and is certainly much utilized/more widely explored than any other scientific approach to agriculture. Contributions from breeding are so immense that other disciplines have only endeavored either to recover the true value of breeding efforts or tried to protect achievements acquired from breeding. These are the breeders who domesticated cotton, though mainly through selection, to be grown as an annual crop and produce lint that has enriched consumption value. An examination of many cotton research programs shows that the initial efforts in breeding were upgraded into research stations and institutes, which emerged as multidisciplinary focal research centers on cotton. Instances where the inverse happened and the breeding of varieties was added to an existing entomological or agronomic research program may exist, but are rare. In cotton, breeding is the leader and at times was regarded as the central axis of any cotton research program.
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