Wheat quality improvement at CIMMYT and the use of genomic selection on it

Publication date: Available online 29 October 2016 Source:Applied & Translational Genomics Author(s): Carlos Guzman, Roberto Javier Peña, Ravi Singh, Enrique Autrique, Susanne Dreisigacker, Jose Crossa, Jessica Rutkoski, Jesse Poland, Sarah Battenfield The International Center for Maize and Wheat Improvement (CIMMYT) leads the Global Wheat Program, whose main objective is to increase the productivity of wheat cropping systems to reduce poverty in developing countries. The priorities of the program are high grain yield, disease resistance, tolerance to abiotic stresses (drought and heat), and desirable quality. The Wheat Chemistry and Quality Laboratory has been continuously evolving to be able to analyze the largest number of samples possible, in the shortest time, at lowest cost, in order to deliver data on diverse quality traits on time to the breeders for making selections for advancement in the breeding pipeline. The participation of wheat quality analysis/selection is carried out in two stages of the breeding process: evaluation of the parental lines for new crosses and advanced lines in preliminary and elite yield trials. Thousands of lines are analyzed which requires a big investment in resources. Genomic selection has been proposed to assist in selecting for quality and other traits in breeding programs. Genomic selection can predict quantitative traits and is applicable to multiple quantitative traits in a breeding pipeline by attaining historical...

Source: Applied and Translational Genomics - October 29, 2016 Category: Genetics & Stem Cells Source Type: research