Quantitative Genetics, Genomics, and the Future of Plant Breeding

Quantitative genetics (in its various guises) has been the intellectual cornerstone of plant breeding for close to 100 years. While the roots of Mendelian genetics, and its rediscovery, are firmly in the hands of plant breeders, it was Fisher's (1918) variance decomposition paper that marks the modern foundation for both quantitative genetics and plant breeding. We are now embarking on the age of genomics, and so it is reasonable to speculate on the implications of both partial and whole genome sequences for quantitative genetics. Likewise, the tools of modern quantitative genetics have been developed in four separate fields: plant breeding, animal breeding, human genetics, and evolutionary genetics. Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, migration of information between these fields has not been what it should be. Thus, it is also an appropriate time to inquire whether useful tools have been developed in these other fields that may be helpful to plant breeders of today and the genomics-based breeders of the near future.