First initiation of breeding started thousands of years ago when human practiced selection based in visually appealing traits. Further, domestication of wild plants eased adaptation of plant breeding. With increase in population the demand for food also increased which resulted in development of various breeding methodologies. Conventional breeding is a selective breeding methodology where crops are selected based on superior performances. Pure-line selections, mass selection, back cross breeding, recurrent selection, hybridization were most famous traditional breeding methods. It is a longer breeding method and is over-dependent on phenotype of plants. However, phenotypes of a plant are affected by various externalities. So, selection based on phenotypic expression is not accurate. As a result, breeder started integrating various branches of biology in plant breeding and developed modern breeding practices. After Mendelian theory and identification of DNA and RNA, plant breeding diverted to molecular era. People started breeding based on less environmentally susceptible parameters like genotypes, visual and genetic markers, image analysis and loci mapping. Some of the most common modern breeding practices include genomic selection, markers assisted breeding, high throughput phenotyping and CRISPR-Cas9. Despite these, plant breeding has fired up the problems of gene erosion due to loss of local landraces and wild-type plants.
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Plant breeding programs are often used to improve varieties through creating diverse agronomic traits. During a breeding program, a lot of genetic diversities are created in the genome after different generations through homologous recombination. Genome sequencing technology has revolutionized the discovery of genes and molecular markers associated with diverse agronomic traits in crop improvement programs. Genomic research is now in the peak of success, thus creating new opportunities for crop improvement modern sequencing technology is now capable of sequencing thousands to millions of bases per run. Modern sequencing technologies enable the sequencing of different cultivars with small to complex genomes at a reasonable time and cost. These massive data can be used to identify important agronomic traits of crops such as fruit color, size, ripening, flowering time adaptation, grain yield, and quality maintenance. In addition, they can be used to develop crop varieties. This mini-review is focused on the role of genome sequencing in genomic research and plant breeding for crop improvements.
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The rise of whole genome sequences of different plants provided more understanding about the gene regulation and genome evolution in further studying plants. More and more pathways and networks are identified by novel gene discoveries. Therefore, the Plant and Animal Genome Conference (PAG XXIV) provides a good venue to share the recent progress in the area of plant research genome sequencing technologies in various plants. However, this information can make a powerful system for developing improved crop varieties. By the way, the genome annotation and assembly is an essential key for breeding of stress-tolerant plants. PAG XXIV demonstrated different works about the extensive use of genomic databases accompanied by bioinformatics tools to accelerate breeding methods, discovery of new approaches to genomics, further increasing biomass of bioenergy crops, and explaining the genetic mechanisms in plant growth and defense. This review article summarizes some of the researches in various plants of rice, corn, wheat, cottonwood, switchgrasses,
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