Patent ID: 8901369

Claim:
A method of selecting a population of plants or seeds with a high energy use efficiency comprising the steps of: a. providing a population consisting of a plurality of individual plants which are genetically uniform; b. isolating a tissue sample or explant from individual plants of said population in a manner which allows further cultivation of said sampled individual plants; c. determining the cellular respiration rate of said individual plants by analyzing said sample of said plants; d. selecting a number of plants wherein said sample exhibits a cellular respiration which is lower than the average cellular respiration of samples from said population; e. growing the selected plants and propagating from each of the selected plants a line of cloned progeny plants; f. determining the energy use efficiency for each line of cloned progeny plants; g. selecting a line of clone plants wherein said energy use efficiency is higher than the average of the energy use efficiency of all lines of cloned progeny plants; h. growing a population of individual plants from said selected line of clone progeny plants; and i. repeating at least once steps b to h on said subsequent population.