Genomics-Assisted Plant Breeding in the 21st Century: Technological Advances and Progress

TLDR: Hubert et al. as mentioned in this paper have shown that the availability and application of molecular markers have accelerated the pace and precision of plant genetics and breeding, while the introduction of a multitude of “omics” tools has provided unprecedented ability to dissect the molecular and genetic basis of traits as well as the characterization of whole genomes.

Abstract: One of the key global challenges of the 21st century is the production of enough food for the increasing world population. As per some recent reports the global population will continue to grow with some 9 billion people by the middle of the current century and the world will need 70 to 100% more food by that time (Godfray et al., 2010 and references therein). Agricultural productivity needs to be increased while addressing the issues of scarcity of arable land and water, impact of changing climate and preservation of natural resources. Improvement of crop yields on available agricultural land requires concerted efforts using modern scientific and technological advances in multiple disciplines (Hubert et al., 2010). Two such disciplines that have revolutionized crop improvement in the recent decades are molecular breeding and plant genomics. While the availability and application of molecular markers have accelerated the pace and precision of plant genetics and breeding, the introduction of a multitude of “omics” tools has provided unprecedented ability to dissect the molecular and genetic basis of traits as well as the characterization of whole genomes.