marker-assisted selection in wheat - ictsd

118Marker-assisted selection – Current status and future perspectives in crops, livestock, forestry and fishSummaryMore than twenty-five years after the advent of DNA markers, marker-assisted selection(MAS) has become a routine component of some private maize breeding programmes.Line conversion has been one of the most productive applications of MAS in maize breeding,reducing time to market and resulting in countless numbers of commercial products.Recently, applications of MAS for forward breeding have been shown to increase significantlythe rate of genetic gain when compared with conventional breeding. Costs associatedwith MAS are still very high. Further improvements in marker technologies, data handlingand analysis, phenotyping and nursery operations are needed to realize the full benefitsof MAS for private maize breeding programmes and to allow the transfer of provenapproaches and protocols to public breeding programmes in developing countries.