Marker Integration in Public Wheat Breeding: CIMMYT Experience and Prospects

CIMMYT has a well-established breeding program for bread and durum wheat for a range of environments. It generates around 5000 advance lines each year, adapted to major agro-ecologies affecting small holder farmers throughout the developing world, suited for evaluation for biotic and abiotic stresses. CIMMYT breeders are mostly relying on phenotypic information for key traits however molecular markers have gradually been integrated into the breeding program

Informative markers are used in the breeding program for the characterization of parental lines, pyramiding gene combinations, and gene introgression via backcrossing.  MAS efficiency is currently increased by the conversion of slab gel based markers to high through-put SNP arrays in mono and multiplex form decreasing the cost of marker deployment in larger scale. In addition recently developed high throughput sequencing approaches offer unprecedented power to uncover functionally important genetic variation at the level of the whole genome and entire meta-populations. This has allowed pilot experiments of whole genome selection strategies increasing the chance of marker efficiency for quantitative traits. The CIMMYT experience and prospects in implementation of MAS and whole genome strategies will be presented.