Gardeners and laymen have, through the ages, been responsible for development of many cultivars of garden crops, edible and ornamental. This continues today as a number of gardeners practice plant hybridization. In any community you will find persons breeding such plants as African violets, orchids, irises, tomatoes and cucumbers. In some cases they are simply selecting the better plants growing in their gardens and saving seeds and in other cases they make controlled pollinations and save seeds. Some even have elaborate kitchen labs for micropropagation.

The objectives of this exercise are to learn how to cross pollinate plants, save seeds and screen through a new generation of seedlings for improved characteristics.

• Examine the parts of some common flowers.
• Cross pollinate flowers of two different lines of a plant and save seeds of the crosses.
• Sow the seeds of a hybrid produced in a previous class.
• Select the offspring of the hybrid for desirable characteristics.