21st century wheat breeding: plot selection or plate detection?

The publicly reported limited application of marker-assisted selection (MAS) in wheat breeding programmes to date is reviewed and contrasted with the current situation, in which it has increasingly become technically feasible to tag almost any gene with a microsatellite assay. Although this capabili...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Trends in biotechnology (Regular ed.) 2003-02, Vol.21 (2), p.59-63
Main Authors: Koebner, Robert M.D., Summers, Richard W.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agriculture - methods
Agriculture - trends
Biological and medical sciences
Biotechnology
Biotechnology - methods
Biotechnology - trends
Breeding - methods
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Gene Expression Regulation, Plant
Genetic Engineering - methods
Genetic Engineering - trends
Genetic Markers - genetics
Genetic Variation
Microsatellite Repeats - genetics
Plants, Genetically Modified - genetics
Plants, Genetically Modified - growth & development
Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide
Triticum - genetics
Triticum - growth & development
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The publicly reported limited application of marker-assisted selection (MAS) in wheat breeding programmes to date is reviewed and contrasted with the current situation, in which it has increasingly become technically feasible to tag almost any gene with a microsatellite assay. Although this capability is starting to have an impact on the conduct of large breeding programmes, a much more profound change in breeding strategy will become possible when single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) technology has matured sufficiently so that the throughput of molecular marker-based genotyping is able to keep pace with the numbers of plants that breeders routinely handle in the field. We explore the extent to which the genomics revolution might generate a change in the conventional breeding paradigm, which has operated with such success for the best part of the 20th century, and identify the need for a substantial reduction in assay price before MAS is likely to make more than a marginal impact on present practice.
ISSN:0167-7799
1879-3096
DOI:10.1016/S0167-7799(02)00036-7