Plant Breeding and Genetics
Horticulture Series
Description:... The evolution from hunting and gathering to farming happened about 10,000 years ago, independently and diffusely in several places in the world. Plant breeding has been part of agriculture since its beginning. Plant breeding is a critical tool in the fight for food security and responsible environmental stewardship in the 21st century. For more than one hundred years, Plant Breeding and Genetics has been widely recognized for developing novel breeding methodologies and discovering economically important genes and varieties. In fact, it is difficult to say whether agriculture influenced plant breeding or vice-versa. Most probably, both have evolved together towards enhancing the quality and yield of cultivated crops. From the beginning of agriculture until today, plant breeding has undergone many changes but even more changes are likely to occur in the future. During the last 50 years plant breeding has entered a molecular era based on molecular tools to analyze DNA, RNA and proteins and associate such molecular results with plant phenotype. Breeding better cultivars has become a highly efficient way to improve plant production for yield, quality and reduced input. Still plant breeders, scientists as well as society have ample interest in widespread public understanding of the use of new as well as old technologies for improvement of our cultivated plants. This is not least to avoid future communication problems with the general public like experienced with genetically modified plants during recent years. This volume Plant Breeding and Genetics aims to present some of the recent advances of 21st century plant breeding, exemplifying novel views, approaches, research efforts, achievements, challenges and perspectives in breeding of some crop species. The book chapters have presented the latest advances and comprehensive information on selected topics that will enhance the reader's knowledge of contemporary plant breeding. It also provides some updated discussions on current advances, challenges, and future perspectives of plant genome studies and applications. The book should prove useful to students, researchers, and experts in the area of conservation biology, genetic diversity, and molecular biology.
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