Some Opportunities and Challenges for MAGIC Populations

Multi-founder advanced generation intercross (MAGIC) populations are being developed and used in a range of crops, including rice. Their benefits for detecting and mapping multiple QTL or multiple traits are well documented.  However, some questions remain about how best to create these populations; for example how many founder lines to use and how many crosses to make. In addition, other opportunities for their use, for example is studying genome organisation and in pre-breeding have yet to be fully explored. We discuss opportunities and challenges in these areas, illustrated with examples from a wheat MAGIC population, and describe areas where improved informatics will help.