Molecular Markers Based Plant Breeding

Marker assisted plant breeding achieved various plant breeding objectives in a cost effective and time consuming manner through molecular marker techniques or statistical and bioinformatics tools. Molecular markers indicate the differences in the nucleotide sequence of different organs or species. Apart from the application of molecular markers in linkage map construction, they are suitable for assessing genetic variations within cultivars and germplasm, in genome selection and fingerprinting studies. The most engaging fact of molecular markers is in Marker assisted selection (MAS). In comparison with traditional breeding, molecular markers have the efficiency to increase the effectiveness of breeding programmes. In this study, the applications of molecular markers in plant breeding studies are described.