Plant Breeding from Laboratories to Fields

Edited by Sven Bode Andersen, ISBN 978-953-51-1090-3, 298 pages, Publisher: InTech, Chapters published May 22, 2013 under CC BY 3.0 license


Breeding of crop plants to make them more adapted to human agricultural systems has been on-going during domestication the last 10 000 years. However, only recently with the invention of the Mendelian principles of genetics and the subsequent development of quantitative genetics during the twentieth century has such genetic crop improvement become based on a general theory. During the last 50 years plant breeding has entered a molecular era based on molecular tools to analyse DNA, RNA and proteins and associate such molecular results with plant phenotype. These marker trait associations develop fast to enable more efficient breeding. However, they still leave a major part of breeding to be performed through selection of phenotypes using quantitative genetic tools. The ten chapters of this book illustrate this development.

Chapter 1  
Genomic in situ Hybridization in Triticeae: A Methodological Approach
by Sandra Patussi Brammer, Santelmo Vasconcelos, Liane Balvedi Poersch, Ana Rafaela Oliveira and Ana Christina Brasileiro-Vidal
Chapter 2  
SRAP Molecular Marker Technology in Plant Science
by Genyi Li, Peter B. E. McVetty and Carlos F. Quiros
Chapter 3  
Molecular Markers and Marker-Assisted Breeding in Plants
by Guo-Liang Jiang
Chapter 4  
Genetic Dissection of Blackleg Resistance Loci in Rapeseed (Brassica napus L.)
by Harsh Raman, Rosy Raman and Nick Larkan
Chapter 5  
Marker Assisted Selection for Common Bean Diseases Improvements in Tanzania: Prospects and Future Needs
by George Muhamba Tryphone, Luseko Amos Chilagane, Deogracious Protas, Paul Mbogo Kusolwa and Susan Nchimbi-Msolla
Chapter 6  
Breeding for Drought Resistance Using Whole Plant Architecture ¡ª Conventional and Molecular Approach
by H.E. Shashidhar, Adnan Kanbar, Mahmoud Toorchi, G.M. Raveendra, Pavan Kundur, H.S. Vimarsha, Rakhi Soman, Naveen G. Kumar, Berhanu Dagnaw Bekele and P. Bhavani
Chapter 7  
Breeding to Improve Symbiotic Effectiveness of Legumes
by Vladimir A. Zhukov, Oksana Y. Shtark, Alexey Y. Borisov and Igor A. Tikhonovich
Chapter 8  
Opium Poppy: Genetic Upgradation Through Intervention of Plant Breeding Techniques
by Brij Kishore Mishra, Anu Rastogi, Ameena Siddiqui, Mrinalini Srivastava, Nidhi Verma, Rawli Pandey, Naresh Chandra Sharma and Sudhir Shukla
Chapter 9  
Castor Breeding
by M¨¢ira Milani and M¨¢rcia Barreto de Medeiros N¨®brega
Chapter 10  
Participatory Plant Quality Breeding: An Ancient Art Revisited by Knowledge Sharing. The Portuguese Experience
by Maria Carlota Vaz Patto, Pedro Manuel Mendes-Moreira, Mara Lisa Alves, Elsa Mecha, Carla Brites, Maria do Ros¨¢rio Bronze and Silas Pego