Field trial design is a crucial consideration in efficient, cost-effective plant breeding programs. Design properties and specific designs relevant to plant breeding are considered. Good field designs are important at all major stages of a plant breeding program from the earlier stages of screening hundreds, possibly thousands of entries through identification of a few elite selections for rele...

INTRODUCTION Reducing plant height has played an important role in improving crop yields. The success of a breeding program relies on the source of dwarfing genes. For a dwarfing or semi-dwarfing gene to be successfully used in a breeding program, the gene should have minimal negative effects on yield and perform consistently in different environments. METHODS In this study, 182 doubled haplo...

DNA markers have enormous potential to improve the efficiency and precision of conventional plant breeding via marker-assisted selection (MAS). The large number of quantitative trait loci (QTLs) mapping studies for diverse crops species have provided an abundance of DNA marker-trait associations. In this review, we present an overview of the advantages of MAS and its most widely used applicatio...

Chloroplast engineering (or chloroplast transformation technology, CTT) is a strategy consisting of inserting a transgene into the chloroplast genome of a plant instead of its nuclear genome. CTT brings advantages such as control of the site of gene insertion, high rates of transgene expression and protein accumulation, lack of transmission of the transgene via pollen due to the fact that plast...

Plant interspecific periclinal chimeras are a mosaic formed by tissues from two species. They are manipulated here as an efficient plant breeding tool for cassava root yields. In this study, plants synthesized from two chimeras, designated as chimera 2 and chimera 4, were characterized morphologically and cytologically to unravel the origin of their tissue layers (L2 and L3). Root yield of the ...

Haploids are plants (sporophytes) that contain a gametic chromosome number (n). They can originate spontaneously in nature or as a result of various induction techniques. Spontaneous development of haploid plants has been known since 1922, when Blakeslee first described this phenomenon in Datura stramonium (Blakeslee et al., 1922); this was subsequently followed by similar reports in tobacco (N...

New alleles are constantly accumulated during intentional crop selection. The molecular understanding of these alleles has stimulated new genomic approaches to mapping quantitative trait loci (QTL) and haplotype multiplicity of the genes concerned. A limited number of quantitative trait nucleotides responsible for QTL variation have been described, but an acceleration in their rate of discovery...

Cisgenesis is a precise science where in genetic modification is by transferring beneficial alleles from crossable species into recipient plant it has additional advantages over traditional breeding / conventional breeding. Cisgenesis can avoid linkage drag, enhance the use of existing alleles. It saves the time to develop variety by combining traditional breeding techniques and modern biotechn...

Alongside other aspects of agriculture, plant breeding is pivotal to securing crop yields necessary to meet the growing demands for human food and animal feed. In addition to the important targets of yield, nutritional quality and resilience to abiotic stresses, breeding for resistance to pests and diseases will become even more critical as the availability of plant protection products is furth...