Designing Future Crops: Genomics-Assisted Breeding Comes of Age

Abstract

Over the past decade, genomics-assisted breeding (GAB) has been instrumental in harnessing the potential of modern genome resources and characterizing and exploiting allelic variation for germplasm enhancement and cultivar development. Sustaining GAB in the future (GAB 2.0) will rely upon a suite of new approaches that fast-track targeted manipulation of allelic variation for creating novel diversity and facilitate their rapid and efficient incorporation in crop improvement programs. Genomic breeding strategies that optimize crop genomes with accumulation of beneficial alleles and purging of deleterious alleles will be indispensable for designing future crops. In coming decades, GAB 2.0 is expected to play a crucial role in breeding more climate-smart crop cultivars with higher nutritional value in a cost-effective and timely manner.

Keywords: alleles; breeding; crop improvement; food security; gene editing; genetic gain; genome; haplotype; phenotype; sequencing.