Genotyping of Mapping Population

Abstract

The basic principle of plant breeding for genetic improvement of crop plants is mainly relied on selection of superior progenies from the available population based on the traits of interest (such as higher yield, improved nutritional quality, appropriate colour or fragrance preferred by the consumer). In general, such traits are not measured directly from the plants; instead, they are enumerated from some other markers or tags that are closely linked to the trait of interest. For example, rice yield is decided by higher number of productive tillers, number of grains/spikelet, etc.; other classical examples are traits such as pea seed size, colour and plant height, used by Mendel. Such tags which used to select the superior progenies from the heterogeneous mixture of population are called as markers. These markers are useful in an array of plant breeding and genetics studies including: