ABSTRACT
Abbreviations ................................................................................................................................. 153 6.1 Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 154 6.2 Plant Breeding ...................................................................................................................... 154 6.3 Plant Tissue Culture .............................................................................................................. 155 6.4 Marker-Assisted Selection (MAS) ........................................................................................ 155
6.4.1 Morphological Markers ............................................................................................ 156 6.4.2 Biochemical Markers ................................................................................................ 156 6.4.3 Molecular Markers ................................................................................................... 158
6.4.3.1 Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism (RFLP) ............................... 159 6.4.3.2 Randomly Amplified Polymorphic DNA (RAPD) .................................... 161 6.4.3.3 Simple Sequence Repeats (SSR)/Microsatellites ....................................... 162 6.4.3.4 Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphism (AFLP) ................................ 163
6.5 Future Insight ........................................................................................................................ 163 6.6 Summary .............................................................................................................................. 164 References ...................................................................................................................................... 165
SSRs Simple sequence repeats STRs Short tandem repeats ZFN Zinc finger nuclease
6.1 INTRODUCTION
Food scarcity caused by growing populations is a compelling and increasingly important issue, and plant biotechnology could offer a quick and reliable method of plant breeding (Bhowmik and Basu 2008; Kumar and Roy 2006). Genetic transformation has represented a more precise and predictable method for producing plants with new and desirable traits (Basu et al. 2010; Vasil 2007). Plant tissue culture has invariably been used to obtain genetically transformed plants by direct gene transfer (Kumar and Roy 2006, 2011; Kumar and Sopory 2010; Stasolla and Thorpe 2009). One of the most important emergent research platforms in the realm of plant biotechnology is “molecular farming,” which has reportedly synthesized several value-added products, such as nutraceuticals and pharmaceuticals (Acharya et al. 2010; Kumar and Sopory 2008).
