486 MUTATION AND PLANT BREEDING 



The better buffered germ plasm able to absorb and tolerate mutation 

 taken in its wide sense makes it also likely that polyploids have a cer- 

 tain advantage in mutation breeding. In addition, they must be younger 

 than the related diploids, and nature has thus had less time to proceed 

 with her own mutation program to a level where improvements will 

 be more and more difficult to achieve. This interpretation will be even 

 more valid for a crop like peanuts which rather recently has been 

 brought from rather restricted to new habitats with new selection pres- 

 sures. 



