Insights into Marker Assisted Selection and Its Applications in Plant Breeding

Burgeoning the human population with its required food demand created a burden on ever-decreasing cultivated land and our food production systems. This situation prompted plant scientists to breed crops in a short duration with specific traits. Marker-assisted selection (MAS) has emerged as a potential tool to achieve desirable results in plants with the help of molecular markers and improves the traits of interest in a short duration. The MAS has comprehensively been used in plant breeding to characterize germplasm, diversity analysis, trait stacking, gene pyramiding, multi-trait introgression, and genetic purity of different cereals, pulses, oilseeds, and fiber crops, etc. Mapping studies pointed out several marker-trait associations from different crop species, which specifies the potential application of MAS in accelerating crop improvement. This chapter presents an overview of molecular markers, their genesis, and potential use in plant breeding.