Molecular Markers in Breeding of Crops: Recent Progress and Advancements

Abstract

A convectional plant breeder faces the challenge of how to more effectively and efficiently perform selection and accelerate breeding progress to satisfy the requirements of changing demands for crop cultivars. However, with the development and advancement of molecular marker technology, the fate of plant breeding has shifted from year to year. Recently, different types of molecular markers have been developed, and advancements in sequencing technologies have greatly increased plant improvement. To further our understanding of molecular markers, several reviews have been published in recent decades. However, with the advancement of newly emerging technologies and techniques, the reviewers did not discuss several recently emerged technologies and techniques in plant breeding. Therefore, this article is intended to be reviewed as an overview of recent breakthroughs in DNA markers and their applications in breeding of crops for early and senior researchers with little or no experience with molecular markers. The progress made in molecular plant breeding, genetics, genomic selection, gene pyramiding, MAS, and gene mapping has contributed to a deeper understanding of molecular markers, provided deeper insights into the variability available for crops, and considerably supplemented current breeding techniques. Next-generation sequencing technologies assist in the identification of novel molecular markers for complex and unstructured populations through genotyping-by-sequencing, gene mapping, QTL mapping, and association mapping. Altogether, the classification of molecular markers and their potential application in plants are discussed.