A) Initial selection:

• Can be either a positive or a negative selection
• Negative screening: A screening technique designed to identify and eliminate the least desirable plants.
• positive screening: which involves identifying and preserving the most desirable plants.

B) 1st Year:

• Select plants with respect to height, maturity, grain size, and any other traits that have ‘production’ or ‘acceptability’ issues
• Bulk seed (may ‘block’ these bulks if wide variation is present for certain traits; e.g. height)
• May be able to use machines to select. i.e. Harvest only tall plants, or save only large seed passed through a sieve.

C) 2nd Year:

• MS really only takes 1 yr because selected seed represents a mixture of only the superior pure lines that existed in the original population
• However, additional rounds of selection and bulking will allow for evaluation under different environments, disease and pest pressures.
• Also, multiple years will allow you to compare performance with established cultivars over years and environments.