marker-assisted selection in wheat - ictsd

20Marker-assisted selection – Current status and future perspectives in crops, livestock, forestry and fishresearch was reported for citrus, mango,pineapple and many other fruit trees largelycultivated in developing countries. Severalresearch initiatives are applying molecularmarkers to industrial crop species, such assugar cane, cotton, rubber, jute, coffee, flaxand oil palm.FAO plant breeding and relatedbiotechnology capacityassessmentIn 2002, a draft questionnaire was designedto gather country information on resourceallocation trends in plant breeding and biotechnologyrelated activities. Later in thesame year, a group of experts includingrepresentatives from CGIAR centres, thepublic and private sectors and non-governmentalorganizations (NGOs), met atFAO headquarters to discuss the natureof the information to be collected and theprocedure for its collection. This resultedin a questionnaire being developed andsent to all public and private applied plantbreeding programmes as well as to biotechnologylaboratories in developing countriesand countries in transition. Among otherissues, the survey gathered informationon the number of full-time equivalentplant breeders and biotechnologists availableduring each five-year period beginningfrom 1985. The questionnaire also requestedinformation concerning trends of resourcesallocated to biotechnology as well as togermplasm improvement (pre-breeding),line development and line evaluation.One of the objectives of the survey wasto assess the gap between biotechnologytools and their successful deployment inapplied breeding programmes (Guimarães,Kueneman and Carena, 2006). The surveytherefore also concentrated on priorities forbreeding, potential international support tostrengthen national breeding programmes,the number of varieties released and thefactors that are most likely to limit thesuccess of applied plant breeding programmes,including the current status ofbiotechnology. The work of gatheringthe information and preparing a technicalreport on the current status of nationalplant breeding and related biotechnologywas assigned to a well-known and respectednational plant breeding scientist. This hasbeen the key to identifying gaps in order todevelop strategies for strengthening effortsdirected at the sustainable use of plantgenetic resources for food and agriculture(PGRFA) in national programmes.For the purposes of this chapter, biotechnologydata were gathered from25 countries to complement the preliminaryassessments based on FAO-BioDeCon the use of molecular markers in developingcountries (Table 5). The data gatheredindicate that tissue culture is the mostcommon biotechnology technique as it wasused in 88 percent of all cases, followedby MAS (44 percent), the double-haploidtechnique (32 percent), interspecificcrosses (28 percent), molecular characterization(24 percent) and genetic engineering(12 percent).Applications of molecular markersinclude a number of categories withinbiotechnology such as MAS, molecularcharacterization, facilitating genetic engineeringand tracking desirable chromosomesegments when making wide crosses (e.g.interspecific crosses). The results in Table 5suggest that molecular markers might bean integral part of developing countryagricultural efforts. MAS seems to be thesecond most utilized biotechnology toolapplied after tissue culture, implying thatemphasis should be given to the developmentof molecular markers to make selectionmore efficient. However, rapid and efficient