Progress and Perspectives in CIMMYT Wheat Molecular Breeding

The CIMMYT Global Wheat Program (GWP) has a long history of research directed towards the application of molecular marker technology to improve the efficiency of wheat breeding for resource poor smallholder farmers around the world. The GWP generates around 1 000 advance lines each year, adapted to major agro-ecologies throughout the developing world, suited for evaluation for biotic and abiotic stresses. Molecular marker technology is integrated into the breeding program and used for the characterization of parental lines, pyramiding gene combinations, and gene introgression via backcrossing. A range of trait projects addressing biotic and abiotic stresses relevant to smallholder farmers will be presented with particular focus on application within the overall breeding strategy. 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 marker assisted and whole genome strategies will be presented.