Plant improvement has shifted its focus from yield, quality and disease resistance to factors that will enhance commercial export, such as early maturity, shelf life and better processing quality. Conventional plant breeding methods aiming at the improvement of a self-pollinating crop, such as wheat, usually take 10-12 years to develop and release of the new variety. During the past 10 years, significant advances have been made and accelerated methods have been developed for precision breeding and early release of crop varieties. This work summarizes concepts dealing with germplasm enhancement and development of improved varieties based on innovative methodologies that include doubled haploidy, marker assisted selection, marker assisted background selection, genetic mapping, genomic selection, high-throughput genotyping, high-throughput phenotyping, mutation breeding, reverse breeding, transgenic breeding, shuttle breeding, speed breeding, low cost high-throughput field phenotyping, etc. It is an important reference with special focus on accelerated development of improved crop varieties.

Plant improvement has shifted its focus from yield, quality and disease resistance to factors that will enhance commercial export, such as early maturity, shelf life and better processing quality. Conventional plant breeding methods aiming at the improvement of a self-pollinating crop, such as wheat, usually take 10-12 years to develop and release of the new variety. During the past 10 years, significant advances have been made and accelerated methods have been developed for precision breeding and early release of crop varieties. This edited volume summarizes concepts dealing with germplasm enhancement and development of improved varieties based on innovative methodologies that include doubled haploidy, marker assisted selection, marker assisted background selection, genetic mapping, genomic selection, high-throughput genotyping, high-throughput phenotyping, mutation breeding, reverse breeding, transgenic breeding, shuttle breeding, speed breeding, low cost high-throughput field phenotyping, etc. It is an important reference with special focus on accelerated development of improved crop varieties.

Plant improvement has shifted its focus from yield, quality and disease resistance to factors that will enhance commerical export, such as early maturity, shelf life and better processing quality. Conventional plant breeding methods aiming at the improvement of a self-pollinating crop, such as wheat, usually take 10-12 years to develop and release of the new variety. During the past 10 years, significant advances have been made and accelerated methods have been developed for precision breeding and early release of crop varieties. This work summarizes concepts dealing with germplasm enhancement and development of improved varieties based on innovative methodologies that include doubled haploidy, marker assisted selection, marker assisted background selection, genetic mapping, genomic selection, high-throughput genotyping, high-throughput phenotyping, mutation breeding, reverse breeding, transgenic breeding, shuttle breeding, speed breeding, low cost high-throughput field phenotyping, etc. It is an important reference with special focus on accelerated development of improved crop varieties.

Plant improvement has shifted its focus from yield, quality and disease resistance to factors that will enhance commercial export, such as early maturity, shelf life and better processing quality. Conventional plant breeding methods aiming at the improvement of a self-pollinating crop usually take 10-12 years to develop and release of the new variety. During the past 10 years, significant advances have been made and accelerated methods have been developed for precision breeding and early release of crop varieties. This book focuses on the accelerated breeding technologies that have been adopted for major oil crops. It summarizes concepts dealing with germplasm enhancement and development of improved varieties based on innovative methodologies that include doubled haploidy, marker assisted selection, marker assisted background selection, genetic mapping, genomic selection, high-throughput genotyping, high-throughput phenotyping, mutation breeding, reverse breeding, transgenic breeding, shuttle breeding, speed breeding, low cost high-throughput field phenotyping, etc. This edited volume is therefore an excellent reference on accelerated development of improved crop varieties.

Plant Breeding Reviews presents state-of-the-art reviews on plant genetics and the breeding of all types of crops by both traditional means and molecular methods. Many of the crops widely grown today stem from a very narrow genetic base; understanding and preserving crop genetic resources is vital to the security of food systems worldwide. The emphasis of the series is on methodology, a fundamental understanding of crop genetics, and applications to major crops.

Humanity is facing many global challenges. These include 1) achieving food security for a rapidly growing population, 2) slowing the progression of climate change by reducing the production and release of greenhouse gases as consequence of human activity, and 3) meeting the increasing demand for clean energy that will not harm the environment. In this regard, legumes deliver several important services to societies. Legumes provide a diverse range of food crops that are significant sources of plant-based proteins for humans globally. Grain legumes present outstanding nutritional and nutraceutical properties, while being an affordable food that contributes to achieving future global food and feed security in the context of an increasing world population.

This book is an advanced textbook and a reference book for the post-graduate plant-breeding students and the plant breeders. It consolidates fundamental concepts and also the latest advances in plant-breeding practices including development in crop genomics. It contains crop wise explanation on origin, reproduction, genetics of yield contributing traits, biotic and abiotic stresses, nutritional improvement and crop specific plant-breeding procedures and techniques. The chapters are planned to describe crop-focused breeding procedure for the major crop plants as per their economic importance. The recent developments in breeding of field crops have been reported. The recent progress made in mapping traits of economic importance has been critically reviewed for each crop. The progress made in markers assisted selected in few crops has been summarized. This book bridges the knowledge gap and bring to the researchers and students information on modern breeding tools for developing biotic and abiotic stress tolerant, climate resilient and micronutrient rich varieties of field crops. The chapters in book are contributed by experienced Plant Breeders.

This new volume focuses on novel breeding and biotechnological approaches for crop improvement, covering recent advances in molecular breeding and plant breeding, such as pre-breeding, reverse breeding, allele mining, next-generation sequencing, etc. The authors consider the important necessity and development of climate-resilient crops that can withstand hostility or adversities of climate without substantially compromising yield and discuss ways to mitigate plant stress. The recent developments in breeding and biotechnological approaches concerning crop improvement that are discussed in the book include molecular markers, their genesis, and their significant applications for crop improvement; QTL mapping, a modern breeding approach for mapping quantitative traits; pulse molecular breeding and genomics; and approaches for precise gene alterations in the genome of organisms by using genome editing. Other techniques include reverse breeding, a technique that allows breeders to develop parental lines directly from the heterozygous plant within a shorter time frame; pre-breeding approaches for biotic and abiotic stress management in crop plants; allele mining as a way to find existing variations in an organism’s gene pool by scanning the entire gene; marker-assisted selection, where molecular markers have played a significant role in accelerating breeding programs; and next-generation sequencing (NGS) platforms in crop improvement, where the authors summarize the technical know-how of each sequencing platform and its merits and demerits. The book introduces the design and importance of Mutmap and its variant in modern breeding, a novel gene mapping approaches that allows rapid identification of causal nucleotide changes of mutants by whole-genome resequencing. Examples and case studies of the various approaches are included as well, with several examples of marker-assisted selection of rice and maize crop and other agriculturally important crops. This informative volume will enhance readers’ knowledge about the recent developments in breeding and biotechnological approaches concerning crop improvement.