ADVANCED MOLECULAR PLANT BREEDING

This new volume, Advanced Molecular Plant Breeding: Meeting the Challenge of Food Security, aims to provide a better understanding of molecular plant breeding to boost the quality of agricultural produce, to increase crop yields, and to provide nutritious food for everyone by 2050 when the global population is expected to reach a new height of about 10 billion. The challenge to provide quality food for such an increased population will be exacerbated by the depletion of natural resources and by shrinking arable land areas. However, scientists believe the challenge can be met by implementing new and improved techniques of quantitative trait inheritance in plant breeding. Integrating genomics and molecular biology into appropriate tools and methodologies can help to create genetically engineered plants, such as by using biotic and abiotic stress tolerance, molecular markers, ‘-omics’ technology, and genome editing.