Smart Breeding

<P>This new volume focuses on novel breeding and biotechnological approaches for crop improvement, covering recent advances in molecular breeding and plant breeding, such as pre-breeding, reverse breeding, allele mining, next-generation sequencing, etc. The authors consider the important necessity and development of climate-resilient crops that can withstand hostility or adversities of climate without substantially compromising yield and discuss ways to mitigate plant stress.</P><P>The recent developments in breeding and biotechnological approaches concerning crop improvement that are discussed in the book include molecular markers, their genesis, and their significant applications for crop improvement; QTL mapping, a modern breeding approach for mapping quantitative traits; pulse molecular breeding and genomics; and approaches for precise gene alterations in the genome of organisms by using genome editing.</P><P>Other techniques include reverse breeding, a technique that allows breeders to develop parental lines directly from the heterozygous plant within a shorter time frame; pre-breeding approaches for biotic and abiotic stress management in crop plants; allele mining as a way to find existing variations in an organism’s gene pool by scanning the entire gene; marker-assisted selection, where molecular markers have played a significant role in accelerating breeding programs; and next-generation sequencing (NGS) platforms in crop improvement, where the authors summarize the technical know-how of each sequencing platform and its merits and demerits.</P><P>The book introduces the design and importance of Mutmap and its variant in modern breeding, a novel gene mapping approaches that allows rapid identification of causal nucleotide changes of mutants by whole-genome resequencing.</P><P>Examples and case studies of the various approaches are included as well, with several examples of marker-assisted selection of rice and maize crop and other agriculturally important crops.</P><P>This informative volume will enhance readers’ knowledge about the recent developments in breeding and biotechnological approaches concerning crop improvement.</P>