Backcrossing

In plant breeding, backcrossing is a crossing of a hybrid with one of its parents.

Advantages:

If the recurrent parent is an elite genotype, at the end of the backcrossing programme an elite genotype is recovered
As there is no ‘new’ recombination, the elite combination is not lost

Disadvantages:

Works poorly for quantitative traits
Is more restricted for recessive traits
In practice, sections of genome from the non-recurrent parents are often still present and can have deleterious traits associated with them
For very wide crosses, limited recombination may maintain thousands of ‘alien’ genes within the elite cultivar