Breeding of Bougainvillea: past, present, and future

Bougainvillea is one of the most prominent and popular perennial ornamental crops in floriculture for multitudinous use and a very appropriate plant for multidisciplinary research work due to its wide range of bract colors, leaf characters, and plant stature. All the present-day colorful varieties and their novelties are the result of bud sports, open-pollinated seedling selection, indiscriminate intervarietal hybridization, limited planned hybridization, chromosomal manipulations, induced mutations, and selections. All basic literature for the development of new varieties is available but all experiments are being conducted as routine activities. Breeders mostly develop new varieties through a selection of bud sports and open-pollinated seedlings. Time has come to assess the past and present breeding knowledge and there is a need to formulate future research programs keeping in view the changing priorities and thrust areas of floriculture. The journey of breeding on bougainvillea from its starting point to its present scenario has been assessed and illustrated in the present article. The article focuses on all available past and present research results of variety development. There is a need for proper designing of breeding research on a need basis. A proper strategy or approach is required to shorten the research and development of the correct path to create new varieties within a reasonable time. Characterization of varieties is very important to identify desirable traits for selective breeding. Considering significant technological knowledge generated so far in the past and present, a future work plan has been proposed for selective hybridization, management of chimera, and target-oriented in vitro mutagenesis. Molecular breeding may be applicable only in rare exceptional cases.