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What is the SMARTest way to breed plants and increase agrobiodiversity?

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Abstract

The evaluation and use of the vast diversity contained in plant genetic resources (PGR) is a main challenge for today’s plant breeding. The use of molecular markers has hugely increased the knowledge about genetic diversity and great hopes are raised about the potential of marker assisted selection [MAS; sometimes also termed SMART breeding (Selection with Markers and Advanced Reproductive Technologies)] to help increasing the use of PGR and maintaining crop genetic diversity. Another approach growing attention has been paid to over the past two decades and which also aims to increase variation in crops is evolutionary and participatory breeding (EPB). In this paper we discuss both the potential of marker-assisted breeding strategies and the potential of EPB breeding to contribute to the maintenance, increase and development of agrobiodiversity. The potentials of molecular markers in the evaluation and use of PGR and their documented contribution to agrobiodiversity are reviewed and results from guided interviews with scientists and breeders are given. Despite tremendous research efforts involving molecular markers, it is still difficult to obtain a clear picture how molecular markers contribute to the use of PGR in plant breeding. Minor and major crops do not benefit to the same degree from recent developments in marker technology. It therefore depends at least in part on economic considerations whether SMART breeding or EPB strategies or both are implemented in the breeding process of a crop. A general decision in favor or against MAS or EPB when breeding for diversity would not yield optimum results.

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Notes

  1. e.g. http://ec.europa.eu/environment/nature/biodiversity/comm2006/2020.htm http://www.bmu.de/english/nature/downloads/publ/41253.php 

  2. http://www.upov.int/upovlex/en/conventions/1991/act1991.html

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Acknowledgments

This study was funded by the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN) Research & Development Grant No 350 889 0020, Titel ‘Applications and Potentials of Marker Assisted Selection (MAS) in Plant Breeding’.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ecological Plant Protection Group, Faculty of Organic Agricultural Sciences, University of Kassel, Nordbahnhofstraße 1a, 37213, Witzenhausen, Germany

    Sarah Brumlop & Maria R. Finckh

  2. Bundesamt für Naturschutz (BfN), Federal Agency for Nature Conservation, Konstantinstraße 110, 53179, Bonn, Germany

    Wolfram Reichenbecher & Beatrix Tappeser

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  1. Sarah Brumlop
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Correspondence to Sarah Brumlop.

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Brumlop, S., Reichenbecher, W., Tappeser, B. et al. What is the SMARTest way to breed plants and increase agrobiodiversity?. Euphytica 194, 53–66 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10681-013-0960-9

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