Molecular plant breeding is cross disciplinary research and development which combines molecular markers, genomics, biotechnology and traditional plant breeding of crop plants in order to produce varieties that meets the future demands in terms of yield, quality and reduced input under changing climate conditions. While genomics seeks to understand function of all genes in a given organism, broad-range metabolic profiling addresses the chemical composition behind the quality traits. The availability of full genome nucleotide sequence in Arabidopsis, rice, poplar and now also Brachypodium is the first step in understanding the genome’s function. The crop compositional quality can now be analysed by metabolomic and proteomic platforms that are independent of the species in contrast to transcriptomics.
For plant breeding this information gives resources not available before. The new data affects not only breeding by marker-assisted selection, mutagenesis or by genetic modification, but opens for including wide genetic variation. The challenge in future breeding for modification of qualitative traits of fruits and seeds will require working with both the genes directly controlling the biosynthetic pathway and quantitative traits.
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