Molecular Plant Breeding

Contents: I. General: 1. Introduction.2. The Relevance of Genetics and Genomics in Plant Breeding. 3. Tools of Plant Breeding. 4. Breeding of Self-Pollinated Crops. 5. Breeding of Cross-Pollinated Crops.6. Breeding for Biotic Stress Resistance. 7. Breeding for Resistance to Abiotic Stresses. 8. Breeding for Quality Traits. II. Transgenic technology: 9. The Basic Techniques of Transgenic Technology.10. Transgenic Plants for Resistance to Biotic and Abiotic Stresses. 11. Transgenic Plants with modified Quality and other Novel Traits. 12. Biosafety Issues Related to and Adoption of Transgenic Crops. III. Molecular Markers:13. Molecular Marker Systems and Trait Phenotyping. 14. Marker-Trait associations. 15. Applications of molecular markers in plant breeding. IV. Miscellaneous: 16. Variety release, seed multiplication and intellectual property rights. Subject index. Author Index. 

The discipline of plant breeding has undergone transformation due to the assimilation of the rapid developments in molecular biology. The existing books on plant breeding deal mainly with the classical approaches, while specialized books on molecular approaches usually lack discussion of the classical methods. The book Molecular Plant Breeding attempts to present the complete picture of plant breeding ranging from the classical to the molecular approaches applied to crop improvement. The book is divided into four sections: Classical Plant Breeding, Transgenic technology, Molecular Markers, and Miscellaneous. The first section deals with the classical plant breeding and is divided into eight chapters. The second section has four chapters and describes transgenic technology. The third section discusses various aspects of molecular markers and is spread over three chapters. The final section has a single chapter dealing with variety release, seed multiplication and intellectual property rights.

This book is designed primarily for graduate students, viz., B.Sc. agriculture and B.Sc. science students with botany as one of the subjects, who would get their first exposure to plant breeding. It would also be useful for the post-graduate students, especially in botany, and to teachers of the subject. The book is written in simple and easy to understand language. Illustrations and photographs have been provided wherever they were expected to facilitate comprehension of the subject under discussion. (jacket)