분자마커를 활용한 옥수수 육종

Abstract

Maize is one of the most important foodand feed crops in the world including Southeast Asia. Inspite of numberous efforts with conventional breeding, themaize productions remain low and the loss of yields bydrought and downy mildew are still severe in Asia. Geneticimprovement of maize has been performed with molecularmarker and genetic engineering. Because maize is one ofthe most widely studied crop for its own genome and hastremendous diversity and variant, maize is considered as aforefront crop in development and estimation of molecularmarkers for agricultural useful trait in genetics and breeding. Using QTL (Quantitative Trait Loci) and MAS (Marker AssistedBreeding), molecular breeders are able to accelerate thedevelopment of drought tolerance or downy mildew resistancemaize genotype. The present paper overviews QTL/MASapproaches towards improvement of maize production againstdrought and downy mildew. We also discuss here the trendsand importance of molecular marker and mapping populationin maize breeding.