marker-assisted selection in wheat - ictsd

Chapter 22 – Marker-assisted selection: policy considerations and options for developing countries 459Box 2Centralized national centres of excellence and sectoral/subsectoralinstitutionsMore technologically advanced developing countries such as Brazil, China, India and South Africaand others have established one or a number of cutting-edge centres for biotechnology workingon both basic and strategic techniques and tools, and providing analytical and other support tonational sectoral or subsectoral centres working on more applied and adaptive research projects.For example, the African Centre for Gene Technologies (ACGT) is an initiative by the SouthAfrican Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and the University of Pretoriato create a national centre of expertise and a world-class platform in gene and genome analysis.Its focus is on using genetic markers to understand disease resistance in plants and nitrogenmetabolism in cattle under harsh and arid environmental conditions. It supports the moredownstream work of the Forestry and Agriculture Biotechnology Institute as well as various cropcentres. ACGT is a member of the Southern African Network on Biosciences (SANBIO) andpart of the NEPAD-sponsored African Biosciences initiative.• adequate technical advisory services areable to support technically the disseminationof the improved variety or breed;and• effective delivery, monitoring and evaluationstrategies are in place to bring theproducts of MAS-related R&D to usersand beneficiaries.Country options forimplementing MASCountries with high-quality personneland facilities for phenotypicevaluation and selection and inmolecular biologyIndividually or collectively and for anumber of crop species, public institutionsin these countries have the skills both tochoose the appropriate parental and segregatingmaterials and to apply routinely andwith high throughput the full range of techniquesavailable (including those requiringsequence information) to develop molecularmarkers. Through the establishmentof centralized centres of excellence andsectoral/subsectoral institutions (Box 2),they have the potential to validate putativemarkers by combining their use withthe detailed and comprehensive phenotypicinformation available on large numbers oflines for multiple traits to produce geneticlinkage maps for identifying genomicregions controlling variations in simple andquantitative traits (QTL), and to use theright combination of trait-linked markersto improve the efficiency of parental selectionand breeding programmes.These countries tend to have concentratedtheir MAS activities on theintrogression of a few traits (for instancethose encoded by transgenes) and in afew crops, although markers themselvesare being used for many of the non-MASapplications mentioned earlier. However,they also contribute effectively to globaland regional crop genomic projects directedtowards developing and validating geneticand linked markers and testing their usefulnessfor MAS in breeding programmes.They may also have some skills in applying