KNOWLEDGE OF PHYSIOTECHNICS AND ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH THE TEACHING OF PHYTOGENETICS IN MEXICO

Abstract

Historically, the genetic improvement of plants has been one of the most useful tools to increase the agronomic performance of crops (grains, leaves, stems and/or tubers), which led to higher agricultural education institutions including in The curricula, Applied Plant Genetics courses, whose central focus was the knowledge of inheritance and variation and the study of methodologies for the formation of varieties with greater yield potential. Agricultural research in Mexico, on the other hand, focused mainly on the formation of improved varieties of the most important basic crops, with agronomic performance prevailing as the primary selection criterion. At first, the results were very encouraging, but as the crisis in food production worsened, it was observed that through conventional genotechnical methods it was difficult to obtain higher-yielding genocultivars; The above made it necessary to analyze the production process, with the purpose of better understanding the factors that limit the expression of agronomic performance, in order to define new selection criteria that would make the process of obtaining new cultivars more efficient. If it is considered that the phenotype of a plant is a consequence of its genetic information modified by the environment and that the expression of each of its organs is modified by the physiological state or internal environment of the plant (Bidwell, 1979), then it is clear to understand that Agronomic performance will be the result to a large extent of the interaction between the external environment and the genetic information that governs the metabolic processes of plants. From this angle, agronomic performance could be analyzed in terms of metabolic processes, which, because they are heritable, could be managed through the known methods of Genotechnology. Likewise, new selection criteria related to agronomic performance could emerge. Therefore, Plant Genetics students at the undergraduate and graduate level, in addition to the Genotechnics courses, must have a solid preparation in Plant Physiology and related courses.