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Can genomics boost productivity of orphan crops?

Nature Biotechnology volume 30, pages 1172–1176 (2012)Cite this article

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Advances in genomics over the past 20 years have enhanced the precision and efficiency of breeding programs1 in many temperate cereal crops2,3. One of the first applications of genomics-assisted breeding has been the introgression of loci for resistance to biotic stresses or major quantitative trait loci (QTLs) for tolerance to abiotic stresses into elite genotypes through marker-assisted backcrossing (MABC)4. For instance, introgression of a major QTL for submergence tolerance (Sub1) into widely grown rice varieties has substantially improved yield in >15 million hectares of rain-fed low-land rice in South and Southeast Asia5. Despite this success story, the overall adoption of genomics-assisted breeding in developing countries is still limited especially for complex traits like yield under environmental stress in several other crops6,7.

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Figure 1: Schematic representation of three molecular breeding approaches for crop improvement.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank G. Atlin, CIMMYT, Mexico, for useful discussions while preparing the manuscript. R.K.V. appreciates help received in various ways from M. Roorkiwal, K. Teshome, M. Pandey, R. Mir, C. Sivakumar and R. Saxena of ICRISAT. Thanks are also due to Department of Biotechnology, Government of India and CGIAR Generation Challenge Programme for their financial support to R.K.V. via the Center of Excellence (CoE) and Theme Leader discretionary grant, respectively.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center of Excellence in Genomics (CEG), International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), Hyderabad, India

    Rajeev K Varshney

  2. CGIAR Generation Challenge Programme (GCP), c/o International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), Mexico, DF, Mexico

    Rajeev K Varshney & Jean-Marcel Ribaut

  3. School of Plant Biology (M084), Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences, The University of Western Australia (UWA), Crawley, Australia

    Rajeev K Varshney

  4. United States Department of Agriculture–Agriculture Research Service, Ithaca, New York, USA

    Edward S Buckler

  5. Department of Plant Breeding and Genetics, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA

    Edward S Buckler

  6. Department of Agroenvironmental Sciences and Technology, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

    Roberto Tuberosa

  7. DuPont Pioneer, Wilmington, Delaware, USA

    J Antoni Rafalski

  8. Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics (ACPFG), University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia

    Peter Langridge

Authors
  1. Rajeev K Varshney
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  2. Jean-Marcel Ribaut
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  3. Edward S Buckler
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  4. Roberto Tuberosa
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  5. J Antoni Rafalski
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  6. Peter Langridge
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Correspondence to Rajeev K Varshney.

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Varshney, R., Ribaut, JM., Buckler, E. et al. Can genomics boost productivity of orphan crops?. Nat Biotechnol 30, 1172–1176 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.2440

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