Article Title: Accelerating Genetic gain through Genomic Selection in Crop Breeding

Plant breeding has played a key role in agricultural development, helping to improve crop yield, disease resistance, and adaptability to changing environments. Traditionally, breeders mainly depended on phenotypic selection and Mendelian genetics, but these methods were often time-consuming and labour intensive. MAS is less successful for quantitative variables governed by numerous small-effect QTLs, but it is helpful for choosing genes or QTLs with significant effects.

MARS does this better by utilizing both phenotypic and marker data, but it still mostly relies on markers that are strongly linked to the characteristic. In order to get around this restriction, Meuwissen et al. (2001) suggested Genomic Selection (GS), which uses genome-wide markers, including markers that don’t significantly correlate with the trait on their own. Plant breeding has been revolutionized by Genomic Selection (GS), which makes it possible to quickly and accurately identify superior plants. It can forecast how well plants will perform in key characteristics like yield, disease resistance, and stress tolerance. GS lowers breeding expenses, improves selection accuracy, and shortens the breeding cycle. It is extensively utilized in horticultural crops, perennial species, wheat, maize, rice, and other crops.

Keywords: Genomic Selection in Crop Breeding, genomic selection, QTL, marker, Breeding value