Biotechnological Approaches for Cereal Crops Improvement

ABSTRACT

Today the world population is increasing at the most rapid rate ever. It is fore cast that by the year 2050, the world's population will double to nearly 12 billion people. In fact it has been estimated that the world will need to produce more than twice as much food during the next 45 years as was produced since the beginning of agriculture 10 000 years ago. The continuous development of wheat, barley and maize varieties and lines with improved qualities to feed the world next future is of great necessity. At least for the foreseeable future, plant breeding will play a primary role. Still yet the conventional cereal breeding focuses on the selection of superior progeny from segregating populations, and selection is mostly based on phenotypic characters. Despite the use of many statistical and genetic tools to reduce the environmental effect on the selection of appropriate genotype, there is a confounding impact of environmental factors on phenotype. Breeding new variety takes between 8 to 15–20 years and the release of an improved variety cannot be really guaranteed and depend on the choice of the best parental combination. Hence, breeders are extremely interested in new technologies that could make this procedure more efficient and reliable. Molecular marker technology and genetic engineering offer such a possibility by adopting a wide range of novel approaches to improving the efficiency of selection strategies in cereal breeding. This review aims at providing an overview of the state of art of the application of molecular marker techniques in molecular breeding of cereal crops and how this information could be used to increase the efficiency of plant breeding programs. It is also aimed to outline the recent developments of new improved varieties and lines by genetic engineering worldwide and in Bulgaria by the contribution of AgroBioInstitute.