26 Bulletin UASVM Horticulture, 68(1)/2011 Print ISSN 1843-5254; Electronic ISSN 1843-5394 Breeding for the Present and the Future: Achievements and Constraints of Conventional Plant Breeding and Contributions of Genomics to a New Green Revolution Jaime PROHENS 1) , Ana M. FITA 1) , Adrián RODRÍGUEZ-BURRUEZO 1) , María D. RAIGÓN 2) , Mariola PLAZAS 1) , Santiago VILANOVA 1) 1) Instituto de Conservación y Mejora de la Agrodiversidad Valenciana , Universitat Politécnica de València, Camino de Vera 14, 46022 Valencia, Spain; jprohens@btc.upv.es 2) Departamento de Química, Universitat Politécnica de València, Camino de Vera 14, 46022 Valencia, Spain; mdraigon@qim.upv.es Abstract. During the last century, conventional plant breeding, mostly based in the evaluation at the phenotypic level, has been very successful in increasing the crop yields and in consequence the global production of food. Maize, rice and wheat, the three most important staple crops for mankind, are typical examples of the dramatic increases in yield achieved thanks to the application of the combination of new cultivars with improved cultivation techniques. Conventional plant breeding has been based in developing efficient methodologies for exploiting the available phenotypic variation present in the crops and wild relatives. However, the recent advances in genomics, which allow the direct study of the genotype and its relationship with the phenotype, are bringing a new paradigm shift in plant breeding. Developments in next generation sequencing (NGS) and bioinformatics, are providing breeders with new tools, like large collections of markers which facilitate, among others, developing ultra dense genetic maps, or obtaining new populations of interest in plant breeding, like near isogenic lines (NILs), introgression lines (ILs), or chromosome substitution lines (CSSLs). Also, new approaches like TILLING (Targeting Induced Local Lesions in Genomes) and EcoTILLING (Ecotype TILLING) are allowing discovering genetic variants for genes of interest. All these genomic tools are of great utility for plant breeding as they make possible genome-wide diversity studies of genetic resources, the discovery of genes and QTLs for traits and interest, and marker assisted selection (MAS) including backcross selection, pyramiding of genes, „breeding by design‟, or genomic selection (GS). The availability and application of genomic tools is leading to a new Green Revolution that, hopefully, will be able to cope with the challenges faced by agriculture in this century. Keywords: breeding, genomics, Green Revolution, marker assisted selection, next-generation- sequencing, selection ACHIEVEMENTS OF CONVENTIONAL PLANT BREEDING Plant food production has increased dramatically in the last decades. Average world yield of cereals has almost tripled in the last five decades, increasing from 1.35 t/ha in 1961 to 3.51 t/ha in 2009 (FAOSTAT, 2011). This has allowed raising the production of cereals from 877·10 6 t in 1961 to 2489·10 6 t in 2009, with an expansion of only 9% of the cultivated area. Increases in the production of cereals have outpaced the growth of population, so that in 2009 the cereal production per capita was of 365 kg/person/year, compared to 285 kg/person/year in 1961. The food surpluses have even allowed devoting millions of tons of cereals to the production of bio-ethanol fuel (Balat and Balat, 2009). The unparalleled yield improvements in the last century have resulted from improved cultivation techniques and new varieties, and although different estimates exist depending of the crop and region, the effect attributable to brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk