About this Research Topic
The human population reached 8 billion on the 15th of November 2022 and by 2100 is predicted to rise to 11.2 billion. Between the years 2009 to 2050, the population is expected to grow by 2.3 billion people, and all this growth is predicted to take place in developing nations. This accelerating growth is causing immense pressure on agriculture and is going to require increasing overall food production. Moreover, climate change-induced extreme weather events like prolonged heat and drought conditions, and floods are also causing huge crop losses worldwide.
Crop improvement programs with a mandate to breed better varieties have immense potential in achieving the challenge of increasing food production and feeding the world. In the last few decades, successful plant breeding efforts have delivered highly productive varieties. However, in order to meet the forecasted future demands, the rate of genetic improvement of crops needs to be increased twofold to attain food security. Combining modern sequencing technologies with molecular plant breeding has contributed significantly and resulted in improved sustainable crop improvement programs. To date, the large-scale sequencing efforts have been biased toward a few agriculturally important crops leaving millions of unexplored species of Viridiplantae with potential pharmaceutical and nutraceutical importance. However, the cost-effective high-throughput sequencing technologies have now made DNA and RNA sequencing more feasible for plant species with large and complex genomes, underutilized or minor crops of nutraceutical importance, and unexplored medicinal plants of therapeutic importance.
With the rapid growth in functional genomic research, the identification and utilization of functional markers located in targeted genes or near the candidate genes are providing an opportunity to further accelerate and improve molecular breeding programs. Markers present in the genic region directly linked to the trait of interest which also functionally categorizes the phenotypic variation are called the functional markers. Development of functional markers involves the understanding of allelic variation within the gene and sequencing of the allele between genotypes to identify the polymorphism responsible for the causative variation. The polymorphism among the alleles may be because of insertions/deletions, SNPs, and length variation within SSRs. The main purpose of this issue is to make a collection of critical work performed in the domain of molecular breeding using functional markers resources in agriculturally important as well as underutilized and less explored plant species.
Therefore, in this collection, original research articles, reviews, mini-reviews, and opinion articles will address the following themes but are not limited to these only.
• Next-generation sequencing technologies, a tool for the identification of genome-wide molecular markers (SSRs, SNPs, and InDels) and their utilization for molecular breeding.
• Development of functionally relevant allele-specific markers for precision breeding: biotic and abiotic stress tolerance.
• Identification of functional polymorphism in the largely unexplored non-coding genome to enhance the understating that how variations in the non-coding regions affect or shape the plant traits.
Crop improvement programs with a mandate to breed better varieties have immense potential in achieving the challenge of increasing food production and feeding the world. In the last few decades, successful plant breeding efforts have delivered highly productive varieties. However, in order to meet the forecasted future demands, the rate of genetic improvement of crops needs to be increased twofold to attain food security. Combining modern sequencing technologies with molecular plant breeding has contributed significantly and resulted in improved sustainable crop improvement programs. To date, the large-scale sequencing efforts have been biased toward a few agriculturally important crops leaving millions of unexplored species of Viridiplantae with potential pharmaceutical and nutraceutical importance. However, the cost-effective high-throughput sequencing technologies have now made DNA and RNA sequencing more feasible for plant species with large and complex genomes, underutilized or minor crops of nutraceutical importance, and unexplored medicinal plants of therapeutic importance.
With the rapid growth in functional genomic research, the identification and utilization of functional markers located in targeted genes or near the candidate genes are providing an opportunity to further accelerate and improve molecular breeding programs. Markers present in the genic region directly linked to the trait of interest which also functionally categorizes the phenotypic variation are called the functional markers. Development of functional markers involves the understanding of allelic variation within the gene and sequencing of the allele between genotypes to identify the polymorphism responsible for the causative variation. The polymorphism among the alleles may be because of insertions/deletions, SNPs, and length variation within SSRs. The main purpose of this issue is to make a collection of critical work performed in the domain of molecular breeding using functional markers resources in agriculturally important as well as underutilized and less explored plant species.
Therefore, in this collection, original research articles, reviews, mini-reviews, and opinion articles will address the following themes but are not limited to these only.
• Next-generation sequencing technologies, a tool for the identification of genome-wide molecular markers (SSRs, SNPs, and InDels) and their utilization for molecular breeding.
• Development of functionally relevant allele-specific markers for precision breeding: biotic and abiotic stress tolerance.
• Identification of functional polymorphism in the largely unexplored non-coding genome to enhance the understating that how variations in the non-coding regions affect or shape the plant traits.
Keywords: Agronomically important genes, molecular plant breeding, next generation sequencing technologies, genome-wide molecular markers, RNA sequencing, QTLs
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