High-yielding varieties (abbreviated as HYVs) of agricultural

crop A crop is a plant that can be grown and harvested extensively for profit or subsistence. In other words, a crop is a plant or plant product that is grown for a specific purpose such as food, Fiber, fibre, or fuel. When plants of the same spe ...

s are varieties of crops that are usually characterized by a combination of the following traits in contrast to the conventional ones: * Higher

crop yield In agriculture, the yield is a measurement of the amount of a crop grown, or product such as wool, meat or milk produced, per unit area of land. The seed ratio is another way of calculating yields. Innovations, such as the use of fertilizer, the ...

per unit area * Higher quality of crops * Improved response to

fertilizers A fertilizer or fertiliser is any material of natural or synthetic origin that is applied to soil or to plant tissues to supply plant nutrition, plant nutrients. Fertilizers may be distinct from Liming (soil), liming materials or other non- ...

* Early maturation * Resistance to droughts and floods * High reliance on

irrigation Irrigation (also referred to as watering of plants) is the practice of applying controlled amounts of water to land to help grow crops, landscape plants, and lawns. Irrigation has been a key aspect of agriculture for over 5,000 years and has bee ...

and fertilizers (see

intensive farming Intensive agriculture, also known as intensive farming (as opposed to extensive farming), conventional, or industrial agriculture, is a type of agriculture, both of arable farming, crop plants and of Animal husbandry, animals, with higher levels ...

) * Dwarfness (smaller size) * Resistance to many diseases and

insects Insects (from Latin ') are hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body (head, thorax and abdomen), three pairs of jointed ...

. The most popular HYVs can be found among

wheat Wheat is a group of wild and crop domestication, domesticated Poaceae, grasses of the genus ''Triticum'' (). They are Agriculture, cultivated for their cereal grains, which are staple foods around the world. Well-known Taxonomy of wheat, whe ...

corn Maize (; ''Zea mays''), also known as corn in North American English, is a tall stout Poaceae, grass that produces cereal grain. It was domesticated by indigenous peoples of Mexico, indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 9,000 years ago ...

soybean The soybean, soy bean, or soya bean (''Glycine max'') is a species of legume native to East Asia, widely grown for its edible bean. Soy is a staple crop, the world's most grown legume, and an important animal feed. Soy is a key source o ...

rice Rice is a cereal grain and in its Domestication, domesticated form is the staple food of over half of the world's population, particularly in Asia and Africa. Rice is the seed of the grass species ''Oryza sativa'' (Asian rice)—or, much l ...

potato The potato () is a starchy tuberous vegetable native to the Americas that is consumed as a staple food in many parts of the world. Potatoes are underground stem tubers of the plant ''Solanum tuberosum'', a perennial in the nightshade famil ...

, and

cotton Cotton (), first recorded in ancient India, is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective case, around the seeds of the cotton plants of the genus '' Gossypium'' in the mallow family Malvaceae. The fiber is almost pure ...

. They are heavily used in commercial and

plantation Plantations are farms specializing in cash crops, usually mainly planting a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. Plantations, centered on a plantation house, grow crops including cotton, cannabis, tob ...

farms. The

Green Revolution The Green Revolution, or the Third Agricultural Revolution, was a period during which technology transfer initiatives resulted in a significant increase in crop yields. These changes in agriculture initially emerged in Developed country , devel ...

in the late 1960s (or generally, in the second half of the 20th century) introduced farmers to cultivation of food crops using HYV seeds, although their ancestral roots may be older. Compared to the traditional seeds, HYV seeds promise to produce much greater amounts of grain on a single plant. As a result, the same piece of land now produces much larger quantities of foodgrains than was possible earlier. However, HYVs need plenty of water, chemical

and

pesticides Pesticides are substances that are used to pest control, control pest (organism), pests. They include herbicides, insecticides, nematicides, fungicides, and many others (see table). The most common of these are herbicides, which account for a ...

to produce the best results.

Development

HYV seeds were developed by scientists to improve food supplies and reduce

famine A famine is a widespread scarcity of food caused by several possible factors, including, but not limited to war, natural disasters, crop failure, widespread poverty, an Financial crisis, economic catastrophe or government policies. This phenom ...

developing countries A developing country is a sovereign state with a less-developed Secondary sector of the economy, industrial base and a lower Human Development Index (HDI) relative to developed countries. However, this definition is not universally agreed upon. ...

. HYVs are developed in the field of

biotechnology Biotechnology is a multidisciplinary field that involves the integration of natural sciences and Engineering Science, engineering sciences in order to achieve the application of organisms and parts thereof for products and services. Specialists ...

, by genetic crossbreeding of plants.

Advantages

High yielding variety seeds are known for their resistance to insects and diseases and ability to produce high yields. These seeds are superior in quality and promote abundant and healthy crop production. The high-yielding seeds exhibit resilience against

floods A flood is an overflow of water (list of non-water floods, or rarely other fluids) that submerges land that is usually dry. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Floods are of significant con ...

and droughts, resulting in better-quality yields. They also mature earlier than the traditional seeds.

Disadvantages

HYV crops need a lot of inputs (such as fertilizers and pesticides) to grow, and this increases costs as well as environmental pollution. HYV seeds are very expensive. The poorest farmers have been unable to buy HYV seeds, so they are of no benefit to them.

References

External links

*{{cite web, url=http://impact.cgiar.org/pdf/42_1.pdf, title=Development and Spread of High-yielding Varieties Of Wheat And Rice in the Less Developed Nations, publisher=U.S. Department Of Agriculture Office Of International Cooperation And Development In Cooperation With U.S. Agency For International Development, year=1978, access-date=2016-11-10, archive-date=2015-01-21, archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150121170544/http://impact.cgiar.org/pdf/42_1.pdf, url-status=dead Agriculture Crops Seeds

Development

Advantages

Disadvantages

See also

References

External links