Sequence-based marker development in wheat: advances and applications to breeding

In the past two decades, the wheat community has made remarkable progress in developing molecular resources for breeding. A wide variety of molecular tools has been established to accelerate genetic and physical mapping for facilitating the efficient identification of molecular markers linked to genes and QTL of agronomic interest. Already, wheat breeders are benefiting from a wide range of techniques to follow the introgression of the most favorable alleles in elite material and develop improved varieties. Breeders soon will be able to take advantage of new technological developments based on Next Generation Sequencing. In this paper, we review the molecular toolbox available to wheat scientists and breeders for performing fundamental genomic studies and breeding. Special emphasis is given on the production and detection of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that should enable a step change in saturating the wheat genome for more efficient genetic studies and for the development of new selection methods. The perspectives offered by the access to an ordered full genome sequence for further marker development and enhanced precision breeding is also discussed. Finally, we discuss the advantages and limitations of marker-assisted selection for supporting wheat improvement.